Read Encore for Free Online

tale. Then why can’t I dance the Sugar Plum as though I am on their side, as though I, too, know I am merely an illusion for their momentary pleasure, for Clara’s pleasure? I will be an intelligent, humorous Sugar Plum who enjoys the game while knowing full well that it is a game. She could not go back to sleep, although she had often been told that it was essential to rest properly before a performance. She was so excited at the notion of dancing her unusual Sugar Plum that she could not relax. She had never felt so wonderful. In time for the performance, the black, hearselike carriages used to convey dance students from the school to the Mariinsky took Natalia’s group the short distance between the two buildings. Natalia and Katya, who was to be an older girl at the Christmas party in the first scene, went to the dressing room reserved exclusively for members of the school. Katya chattered continuously, but Natalia said not a word, her thoughts riveted on the movements that she would have to perform. She put on her costume of pink tulle and her small headdress. A spot of rouge on each cheekbone, and that was that. Natalia fretted, and yet she yearned to feel a part of the Mariinsky, longing for the moment of almost nuptial blending of herself into the company of dancers, when she would cease to be set apart as a student and finally become her true self. Impatiently interrupting Katya, she said: “I must go to the water closet.” Quickly she turned on her heels and left the room, which had begun to oppress her.
    Natalia leaned against the door of the students’ dressing room and shut her eyes. Red dots moved on the inside of her lids, and her mouth tasted of iron. She looked around and, seeing no one, ran on tiptoes through the corridors of the Mariinsky Theatre, in search of the room where she knew dancers of the corps de ballet must be preparing themselves. Now, for the first time, she did not want to be around other students: She wanted to see and be a part of the real world of ballet, to smell real makeup and listen to bona fide dancers as they gossiped before a performance.
    She stood on the threshold of the dancers’ dressing room, a very small, slight girl in a pink tutu, with a delicate, heart-shaped face and large almond eyes. Women were sitting at tables in front of mirrors, applying white powder and rouge to their faces and helping each other adjust wigs and climb into elaborate costumes of moiré silk and brocade. The heady odor of female sweat mingled thickly with that of musty clothes and cosmetics. Natalia watched, bemused, as large thighs gleamed before her, strong female thighs, less dainty than those of the younger students. Immodest bodices were exposed in ways that would have shocked the governesses of the school. Yet Natalia did not feel as though she were witnessing an improper sight. She felt, somehow, that here, and here alone, was reality. One pretty young woman whispered to a companion: “Are you being taken to Cubat for supper tonight, Marie?” And Natalia found herself yearning, from deep inside herself, for the privilege of being asked that question in such an easy manner. To belong!
    So engrossed had she become in the women’s conversation that she did not notice the approach of a tall, black-haired
    woman dressed as Clara’s mother. “Well,” the woman said in an undertone, “ ‘tis the spirit of the Sweet, I see.”
    Natalia looked up and saw a long face with strong features, not at all beautiful but distinctive, unforgettable. The woman had black eyes and a Roman nose. Natalia smiled. “Not at all sweet. Only the costume,” she said.
    â€œAh. Good. I am allergic to sugar; it gives me indigestion.”
    Natalia began to laugh. She wondered if this woman would also be going to supper at Cubat, and if she shared Natalia’s secret irritation with the symmetrical classicism of Petipa’s ballets, considered beyond