Dog Years (35 page)

When we were unable to distract him with minerals from teaching according to the curriculum, his adoptive daughter Jenny had to fill the bill. The class speaker politely requested permission to speak and asked Dr. Brunies to tell us about Jenny's progress as a ballet dancer. The class, he said, would be pleased. Everyone was eager to know what had happened at the ballet school since the day before yesterday. And just as regularly as the key word "mica gneiss," the key word "Jenny" was able to lead Dr. Brunies astray: he broke off the migrations, let Ostrogoths and Visigoths rot by the Black Sea, and shifted to the new topic. He no longer sat motionless behind his desk: like a dancing bear he hopped about between bookcase and blackboard, seized the sponge and effaced the just outlined itineraries of the Goths. And over a still wet ground he made chalk squeak swiftly: not until a good minute later -- he was still writing in the lower lefthand corner -- did the wetness begin to dry at the upper right:

"First position, second position, third position, fourth position." That is what was written on the blackboard when Dr. Oswald Brunies began his theoretical instruction in ballet dancing with the words: "As is customary throughout the world, we shall begin with the basic positions and then turn our attention to the bar exercises." The schoolmaster invoked the authority of Arbeau, the first theoretician of the dance. According to Arbeau and Brunies there were five basic positions, all based on the principle of turned-out toes. During my first years in high school the word "turned-out" acquired more weight than the word "spelling." To this day a glance at a ballet dancer's feet tells me whether they are turned out enough; but spelling -- with or without an
h,
for instance, or how many
r
's in porridge -- is still a puzzle to me.

We uncertain spellers, five or six ballet fans, sat in the gallery of the Stadttheater and looked on critically at the recital that the ballet master had ventured to stage with the help of Madame Lara. The program consisted of
Polovetsian Dances, Sleeping Beauty
with Petipa's ambitious choreography, and the
Valse Triste,
which Madame Lara had rehearsed.

My opinion: "La Petrich has plenty of sparkle in the
adagio,
but she's not turned out enough."

Little Pioch blasphemed: "Man, take a look at la Reinerl: those lopsided pirouettes, and her turnout is just plain embarrassing." Herbert Penzoldt shook his head. "If Irma Leuwelt can't develop a better instep, she won't hold on as first soloist very long, even if her turnout is terrific."

In addition to the word "instep" and the word "turnout," the word "sparkle" took on importance. So-and-so "may have plenty of technique, but there's no sparkle." Or a certain superannuated male dancer at the Stadttheater, who had to start in the wings when venturing a
grand jet
é
,
but then described a magnificent slow arc, received a magnanimous testimonial from the gallery: "With his sparkle, Brake can do what he likes; it's true that he only does three turns but they've got something."

A fourth word that was fashionable during my days in sixth was "balloon." In the
entrechat six de vol
é
e,
in the
grand jet
é
,
in every variety of leap, a dancer either had "balloon" or he didn't have balloon. Which meant either that in leaping he was able to hover weightlessly in air, or that he did not succeed in calling the laws of gravity into question. In fifth I coined the expression: "The new first soloist leaps so slowly a pencil could follow." That is what I still call leaps that are skillfully delayed: leaps that a pencil could follow. If only I could do that: follow leaps with a pencil.

Dear Cousin,

my class teacher, Dr. Brunies, did not content himself with teaching the ABC of ballet as a substitute for a ballad with seventeen stanzas and a regular joggle; he also taught us exactly what stands on tips when a ballet dancer succeeds in remaining faultlessly and effortlessly on her toes for the length of a single pirouette.

One day -- I don't remember whether we were still on the Ostrogoths or whether the Vandals were already on their way to Rome -- he brought Jenny's silver ballet slippers to class with him. At first he acted mysterious, huddled behind his desk, and hid his potato face with all its little creases behind the silvery pair. Then, without showing his hands, he set both slippers on their tips. His old-man's voice intoned a bit of the
Nutcracker Suite:
and between the inkwell and the tin box with his ten-o'clock sandwiches he made the slippers practice all the positions:
petits battements sur le cou-de-pied.

When the show was over, he whispered, flanked by the silver slippers, that on the one hand the ballet slipper was a still-modern instrument of torture; while on the other hand, a ballet slipper must be regarded as the only kind of shoe in which a young girl can go to heaven in her lifetime.

Then he let Jenny's ballet slippers, accompanied by the class monitor, pass down the rows from desk to desk: Jenny's silver slippers meant something to us. Not that we kissed them. We barely caressed them, we gazed upon their frayed silver glitter, tapped their hard unsilvered tips, played absently with silver ribbons, and all of us attributed magical power to the slippers: out of the poor roly-poly they had been able to make something ethereal which, thanks to ballet slippers, was capable, day in day out, of going to heaven on foot. We dreamed sorrowfully of ballet slippers. Boys who suffered from exaggerated love for their mothers saw her enter their room at night dancing on her toes. Those who had fallen in love with a movie poster dreamt of seeing a film with a toe-dancing Lil Dagover. The Catholics among us waited at altars of Our Lady to see whether the Virgin might not deign to exchange the customary sandals for Jenny's ballet slippers.

I alone knew that it wasn't the ballet slippers that had metamorphosed Jenny. I had been a witness: with the help of plain snow Jenny Brunies had been miraculously alleviated, and so had Eddi Amsel -- it all came out in the same wash.

Dear Cousin,

our families and all the neighbors were surprised at the obvious change in the child who was not yet eleven. But with an oddly smug wagging of the head as though they had all had a presentiment of Jenny's metamorphosis and prayed for it in common, they expressed their approval of what the snow had brought to pass. Punctually every afternoon at a quarter after four Jenny left the Aktienhaus across the street from us and walked primly, with a small head on a long neck, up Elsenstrasse. She propelled herself entirely with her legs and scarcely moved her body. Many neighbors pasted themselves to their streetside windowpanes every day at this hour. As soon as Jenny hove in sight, they said over geraniums and cactuses: "Now Jenny's going to balley."

When my mother missed Jenny's entrance by a minute for housewifely reasons or because she had been gossiping in the hallway, I heard her complaining: "Now I've gone and missed Brunies' Jenny. Well, tomorrow I'll set the alarm clock for a quarter after four, or maybe a little earlier."

The sight of Jenny had the power to move my mother: "What a string bean she's got to be, what a little broomstick." Yet Tulla was just as thin, but thin in a different way. Tulla's wiry figure frightened people. Jenny's figure made them pensive.

Dear Cousin,

our walk to school shaped itself into a strange procession. The girls of the Helene-Lange School and I went the same way as far as Neuschottland. At Max-Halbe-Platz I had to turn off to the right, whereas the girls took Bärenweg in the direction of Christ Church. Because Tulla waited in the half-darkness of our entranceway and made me wait until Jenny had left the Aktienhaus, Jenny had a head start: she walked fifteen, sometimes only ten paces ahead of us. All three of us took pains to maintain the interval. When one of Jenny's shoelaces came undone, Tulla had to retie a shoelace. Before I turned off to the right, I stopped behind the advertising pillar on Max-Halbe-Platz and followed the two of them with my eyes: Tulla was still behind Jenny. But one never had the picture of a dogged chase. On the contrary, it became clear that Tulla was running after Jenny without wishing to overtake the girl with the stiff, artificial gait. Sometimes when the morning sun was halfway up and Jenny cast her shadow, long and as wide as a telegraph pole, behind her, Tulla, prolonging Jenny's shadow with her shadow, stepped pace for pace on Jenny's shadow head.

Tulla made it her business to follow in Jenny's wake, and not only on the way to school. Also at a quarter after four, when the neighbors said: "Now Jenny's going to balley," she slipped out of the stair well and dogged her steps.

At first Tulla kept her distance only as far as the street car stop and turned back as soon as the car bound for Oliva clanged away. Then she began to spend money for the car, taking my pfennigs. Tulla never borrowed money, she took it. She reached into Mother Pokriefke's kitchen cupboard with out asking. She rode in the same trailer as Jenny, but Tulla stood on the rear, Jenny on the front platform. Along the Oliva Castle Park Tulla followed in Jenny's trace at the usual distance, which was slightly diminished only in narrow Rosengasse. And beside the enamel sign "Lara Bock-Fedorova, Ballet School," Tulla stood for a whole hour and no amount of stray cats could distract her attention. After the ballet lesson, she stood with locked-up face, letting the bevy of chattering ballet rats pass with their swinging gym bags. All the girls walked slightly pigeon-toed and carried overly small heads on stem-necks that seemed to need props. For the time it takes to draw a breath Rosengasse smelled, although it was May, of chalk and sour jerseys. Only when Jenny stepped through the garden gate beside the pianist Felsner-Imbs, did Tulla, once the two had a suitable head start, set herself in motion.

What a trio! Always in the lead the stooped Felsner-Imbs in spats and the child with the ash-blond pigtail down her neck; Tulla following at a distance. Once Felsner-Imbs looks around. Jenny doesn't look around. Tulla stands up to the pianist's gaze.

Once Imbs slows down and without stopping plucks a sprig of hawthorn. He puts it in Jenny's hair. Then Tulla likewise breaks off a sprig of hawthorn, but doesn't stick it in her hair, she throws it, after rectifying the interval with rapid steps, into a garden where no hawthorn grows.

Once Felsner-Imbs stops: Jenny stops. Tulla stops. While Jenny and Tulla stand still, the pianist turns about with frightening determination, takes ten paces toward Tulla, raises his right arm, shakes his artist's mane, and points an out stretched finger in the direction of the Castle Park: "Can't you stop molesting us? Haven't you any homework to do? Get along! Go away! We've seen enough of you!" Again and with desperate rashness he turns about, for Tulla neither answers nor obeys the index finger recommending the Castle Park. Imbs is at Jenny's right again. The procession doesn't start moving yet, for while he was sermoning Tulla the pianist's hair has got mussed and has to be brushed. Now it is billowing properly again. Felsner-Imbs takes steps. Jenny takes pigeon steps with feet turned out. Tulla keeps her distance. All three approach the streetcar stop across from the entrance to the Castle Park.

Dear Cousin,

the sight of you exerted a discipline. Passers-by carefully avoided entering the gap between Jenny and Tulla. In busy streets the effect of the two children was amazing. By merely walking in dispersed Indian file they succeeded in creating a moving hole in the crowd.

Tulla never took our Harras with her when she was following Jenny. But I attached myself to them and, as in going to school, left the house with Tulla and walked up Elsenstrasse beside her: the Mozart pigtail ahead of us belonged to Jenny. In June the sun shines with particular beauty between old apartment houses. On the bridge across the Striessbach I detached myself from Tulla and with quick steps moved up to Jenny's left side. It was a cockchafer year. They hung excitedly in the air and scrambled wildly on sidewalks. Some had been stepped on, we stepped on others. The dry remnants of belated cockchafers were always sticking to the soles of our shoes. By Jenny's side -- she took pains not to step on any bugs -- I offered to carry her gym bag. She handed it to me: air-blue cloth in which the tips of the ballet slippers marked their contours. Behind Kleinhammerpark -- clusters of cockchafers buzzed between chestnut trees -- I slackened my pace until with Jenny's gym bag I was keeping step beside Tulla. After the railroad underpass, between the empty market booths of the weekly market, on wet pavement and in among the singing brooms of the street sweepers, Tulla asked me for Jenny's bag. Since Jenny never looked around, I allowed Tulla to carry Jenny's bag as far as Hauptstrasse. Outside the moviehouse Jenny was looking at pictures, in which a movie actress had broad cheekbones and was wearing a white doctor's smock. We looked at pictures in another case. Next week: A little actor smirked six times. Shortly before the streetcar stop I took the gym bag back and climbed with Jenny and Jenny's bag into the trailer of the Oliva car. In the course of the ride cockchafers crackled against the windowpanes of the front platform. After the "White Lamb" stop, I, still carrying the bag, left Jenny and visited Tulla on the rear platform but didn't give her the bag. I paid her fare, for at that time I had learned how to earn pocket money, selling firewood from my father's carpenter shop. After the Friedensschluss stop, when I was visiting with Jenny again, I would have paid for her too, but Jenny presented her monthly pass.