"Kathe Koja - Pas de Deux" - читать интересную книгу автора (Koja Kathe)

Pas de Deux
By
Kathe Koja

SHE liked them young, young men; princes. She liked them young when she
could like them at all because by now, by this particular minute in time she had had it
with older men, clever men, men who always knew what to say, who smiled a certain
kind of smile when she talked about passion, about the difference between hunger
and love. The young ones didn't smile, or if they did it was with a touching
puzzlement because they didn't quite see, weren't sure, didn't fully understand:
knowing best what they did not know, that there was still so much to learn.
"Learn what?" Edward's voice from the cage of memory, deep voice, "what's left
to learn?" Reaching for the bottle and the glass, pouring for himself. "And who'll do
the teaching? You?" That smile like an insect's, like the blank button eyes of a doll
made of metal, made from a weapon, born from a knife and see him there, pale
sheets crushed careless at the foot of the bed, big canopied bed like a galleon
inherited from his first wife the sheets too, custom-made sheets all of it given them
as a wedding present by his first wife's mother: Adele, her name was and he liked to
say it, liked to pretend was it pretense?that he had fucked her too, going from
mother to daughter in a night, a suite of nights, spreading the seed past four spread
legs and prim Alice could never compare, said Edward, with the grand Adele, Adele
the former ballet dancer, Adele who had been everywhere, lived in Paris and Hong
Kong, written a biography of Balanchine, Adele who wore nothing but black from
the day she turned twenty-one and "I don't understand," he would say, head back,
knee bent, his short, fat cock like some half-eaten sausage, "what you think you can
teach me, aren't you being just a little bit absurd?"
"We all have something to learn," she said and he laughed, left the room to return
with a book, Balanchine & Me: Balanchine in color on the cover, a wee
black-and-white of Adele on the back. "Read this," putting the book into her hands.
"Find out how much you don't know." Whiskey breath and settling back into bed,
glass on his chest, big hairy chest like an animal's, he liked to lie naked with the
windows open, lie there and look at her and "Are you cold?" he would say, knowing
she was freezing, that her muscles were cramping. "Do you feel a draft?"
No, she could have said, or yes or fuck you or a million other responses but in the
end she had made none of them, said nothing, got out. Left him there in his canopied
bed and found her own place, her own space, living above her studio: dance studio,
she had been away for a long time but now she was back and soon, another month
or two she would have enough money maybe to keep the heat on all the time, keep
the lights on, keep going. Keep on going: that was her word now, her world, motion
at any cost. She was too old to be a dancer? had been away too long, forgotten too
much, lost the fascistic grace of the body in torment, the body as tool of motion, of
the will? No. As long as she had legs, arms, a back to bend or twist, as long as she
could move she could dance.
Alone.
In the cold.
In the dark.


Sometimes when it got too dark even for her she would leave, head off to the
clubs where for the price of a beer she could dance all night to thrash or steelcore, a