Dance Verdun

Dance Vodun


The carpet was red, sole worn from many steps over numerous years. Kardinsky could relate. He was used to walking the red carpet. There was a time his every entrance was greeted with a fresh red roll, but it had been too long a time to warrant remembering now.

People moved aside to let him pass, but that was only because they either pitied him and his age, or else feared he would stab out their toes with the fierce onyx walking stick that had become his constant companion.

'Head up Kardinsky. Straighten your back and look these krestyanin in the eye.'

The bones of his spine popped and crackled like sheaves of dry paper fed to hearth flames, and the pain was a constant burning as he chided himself to walk tall amongst these so called 'lovers of art.' These rich, soulless New Yorkers who demanded more and more of the dancers who performed for them, without every truly making the connection with the music for themselves. Like asking some hireling to taste the food at a feast for you, and merely describe its taste.

The toadying assistant that the magazine had allocated him droned on about what an honour it was to meet the great Kardinsky, and to blah-blah-blah. Kardinsky stabbed out at the young man's feet with every shuffling step he took, making the toad dance to music only Kardinsky was aware of.

"I understand," Stab. Dance. "This will be the first time," Stab. Dance. "That you've seen Madame Boliver perform," Stab. Dance. "In almost thirty years."

The toad opened up the tiny door that allowed discreet access to the auditorium, and then the old man raised his cane and barred the opening.

"I shall observe Madame Boliver alone. Instead you can ready my car. I shall not want to linger long once I have witnessed this travesty."

Kardinsky withdrew his cane without waiting for a reply, and began shuffling down the centre aisle. With every agonising step he took his body buckled and contracted and drew on the hunched cloak of old age that he despised so acutely.

It was dark and dusty within the theatre. Gloriously so. Every fibre of Kardinsky's body thrummed with the anticipation of performance, even if it had been almost fifty years since it had been at his own. It was something so tangible in the air. More than just a scent or a feeling. Something that spoke to the darkest desires within. He could understand how something so powerful could draw the great Madame Boliver out of retirement. But dancing was for the youth. It spoke of desperation for ones such as they were now to clomp upon the stage like some macabre joke. And yet other reviewers had witnessed her performance in Paris. And such words they had used, "transcendental, astounding, impossible." Yes, impossible. That was the word that had struck most resoundingly with Kardinsky. There are no second chances in life, no turning back of clocks. For the old to be as the young. Yes. That is an impossibility. And so when he was offered the chance to review the show, all he asked as payment was a private viewing. A chance to see Madame Boliver in the flesh. To ensure the flesh was indeed hers.

He was just settling into his chair as a figure emerged from behind-the-scenes. His heart shifted in the seat of his chest as Madame Boliver bowed low to him and then ran through a familiar routine of Arabesque and Battement that dazzled through the watery film of his sight. The lines of her legs seemed to stretch on forever. The height of her ballon made it almost appear as though she were soaring across the stage, held aloft by a puppeteer's strings. Yes. Yes. Wires, strings, lies and fakery. That must be it, because anything else would be...

"No. Stop these lies. This insult to the dance."

He struggled to charge down the aisle even as the ephemeral figure of Madame Boliver leapt back through the curtains as though a cord had been yanked through her body.

His breathing was heavy and laboured by the time he had followed the ballerina backstage. But after a moment of acclimatising to the gloom Kardinsky could only make out a solitary black woman sat upon a high backed wooden chair.

"Where is she? Where is the Madame?"

The dark skin of the woman before him broke into a faint slit of a smile like bone emerging from some deep wound.

"She resting. The dance take it out the lady."

Her accent was thick, almost comical in these days of western homogenisation.

"You'll kill her throwing her around on stage like that. It's appalling. Dangling her on strings like some..."

"Don't use no strings. And she doing what she want. This what she asked for." The woman patted a claw like hand against the empty wall of her chest. "Just like you been asking."

Kardinsky saw something dark and disturbing clutched against her pitiful bosom. A doll. Child like, but made from some material that glistened with a mucosal sheen, almost like a...

One word rose up in his throat, Voodoo, but it was cut off before his lips had even given it shape.

"No mister. That white word. And what we gots here is so much more." She brought her hands together around the doll as she spoke and Kardinsky felt the grip loosen on his cane. "But my lady needs a partner to help her perform."

Kardinsky felt a stifled scream try to erupt from his throat as his joints ground against one another, bone sinking deep into inflamed cartilage that hadn't moved this way in decades.

The dark woman smiled warmly. "Ah. Good. Now we's gonna have ourselves a real dance."

Music filled Kardinsky's head and then everything else was lost to the agony of movement.