Chapter 24Light Isn't Yours to Approve

Three beats to a bar, and every turn he made cut an evenly spaced groove into the slabs.

The Splendid Academician turned. The hem of his coat swept past the backs of his knees, and another groove appeared on the slabs. He did not look at her. He spoke first. His voice was not loud. He bit into every consonant, and not one was missed.

“Keep up with the beat. Three beats, one bar.”

When he finished, there was no echo. The words landed on the slabs in front of her, one after another, and every one of them fell on the edge of a groove. His chest did not move.

His shoes were made of stone, with square toes. Each step landed on the centre of a cross in the mosaic slabs, and not one step was off. She had counted before, from her feet to the middle of the hall: fourteen mosaic slabs in between. This time she did not count.

She did not take up his beat. She sank her whole weight into the old trainer on her right foot and used the weight to pin herself in place. The satin ribbon on her left foot had snapped, and a length of it hung over her ankle, swinging back and forth. The tape around her right ankle had snapped into two loops. It had come loose and lay pressed against the upper of her shoe.

“You count the beats. I count my breath.”

When she said this, her chin barely moved, and every word landed on the spot where she stood. When she had finished, she drew a breath. In for three beats, a pause, then out for five. Her ribs sank one by one, all the way down, and then lifted one by one.

Breath was what she counted, not the beat. It was how many movements one breath could sustain: from breathing in to breathing out, however many steps her feet could land and however many turns she could make, that was the number she counted. After the theatre threw her out, she had no practice room, so she practised in the metro passages and on the stone steps. She counted one breath after another, and when one breath ran out, she began counting the next.

The Academician leapt first. Three beats to a bar. With each turn he swept a cutting arc out from under his hem, and another evenly spaced groove appeared in the slabs. Swan’s shield came out of the flat ring on her left wrist, its pearl-white scales lying one over another. It took the force of each arc and discharged it into the floor. On the first breath it discharged three of them. On the second, two.

The sound of her landing did not follow the beat. It followed her breath, each landing longer than the last.

The Academician stopped in mid-air.

He did not come down. He hung in the centre of the hall, looking down from above, and with one flick of his hand the judgements of gold leaf came scattering down, one leaf at a time. Each one made a thin sound, the same as the sound of pages turning a moment before. They fell by her shoes, on her shoulders, on the slabs around her. One landed on her eyelash. She did not blink, and it slid off.

Each leaf of gold had a number on its veins. She looked at the first four and memorised their numbers, and then she stopped. She could not keep track.

The judgement light came down onto her shoulder and paused. Inside the ring of light was a square shadow, the same size as the red stamp on a rejection slip. Her shoulder did not cave in. The light went out. The feather pieces at the back of her neck were still standing up, layer on layer, not pressed down.

She did not look up to dodge. She drew the shield back onto her wrist and changed to the most strenuous kind of jump: a run of big jumps, each one lower than the last, yet each one closer to the spot directly beneath where he would come down. When she landed, her knees bent first and then straightened, each landing a beat slower than the one before.

She was waiting for his fourth beat.

The fourth beat was empty.

The third breath was already half drawn in. She did not stop. She finished drawing it in, breathed out, counted to five, and only then turned round.

His beat had stopped on the third beat, and he could not pick it up. He hung there with the hem of his coat falling straight down, not moving at all. The shadow of the wig lay over his face, and she could not make out the face. The wig had six curls on each side. Each curl was wound thick with red tape, round to behind the ear, with the same number of turns on every curl. The sceptre lay flat at his side. The book at its top was half open. Every leaf had a small number on it, except the one at the edge of the pages.

She counted her breaths, starting from the fourth, and began to spin.

In this breath she landed four steps. In the next she turned one and a half times round. In the breath after that there was room for only one step, so she turned on that one. The leaves of gold came down one by one. By the time she had counted the eleventh leaf, the grooves on the slabs were half covered. The leaves lay on the grooves very lightly, and came apart at a touch.

The turns grew lower. Quick small steps and the hem swept up all the broken red tape on the floor and twisted it into a column that grew tighter and tighter. The tape carried a row of very small numbers, repeated every inch. Round and round they went, all twisted into the column. The column rose from beneath her feet until it reached her shoulder.

There was no wind in the hall. Now there was. The wind blew out of the column and pushed the spot of the narrow beam off the display stand.

The spot slid across the slabs, over the row of grit beneath the gap under the door, crossed a strip of tape on the iron railing that the wind had pulled loose, and landed on the steps.

There were people standing below the steps. They had been standing there watching the whole time, and none of them had moved. The light fell on them for the first time.

She stopped and lifted her head. The judgement light came on by her feet and went dark again. She did not wait for it.

“Light isn’t yours to approve.”

When she finished, the one hanging in the air fell.

She watched him fall. As he fell, his right hand was still raised, the fingers together and the tips pointing up, just as before. Only the wrist had stopped being straight.

He had not chosen to fall. He could not pick up the next beat, and his own rhythm flung his body down. It hit the slabs, and grit flew up. The whole wig slid off and rolled to the edge of the plinth. Its bone-white curls came unrolled, ring after ring, and the bright red tape came away from it and wound itself into a ball. The coat of gold leaf peeled off a leaf at a time and fell onto the slabs, and each leaf made a sound as it landed.

The column of red tape fell as well. It scattered across the slabs in loops, the broken ends pointing up, every end even.

The one left standing was a middle-aged man.

The cuffs had pilled. One button at the collar was undone. The gaps under his fingernails were full of stone dust, grey-white, lodged in streaks. He stood at the edge of the mosaic slabs. The edge of the stone was round, worn very smooth. He had not slipped.

His chest moved once.

It was very slow. As he breathed in, his shoulders rose first, then his chest, drawing in all the way to the bottom and a little more. It was the first breath he had taken. When it was done, his chest paused, and only then fell again, unevenly.

He lifted his head and looked at her. This time he was very close, close enough to see the lines at the corners of his eyes.

“I have rejected more people than I have assessed. I remember every one.”

The voice struck the walls of the hall and bounced back. One word at a time, it went back and forth between the walls before it came back to his lips.

Her shield drew back, and its scales lay cold against the bone of her wrist. She was still counting her breaths. One. Two. When she reached this point she stopped counting. The satin ribbon on her left foot still hung there, its broken end pointing down, and she did not untie it.

He was gripping a roll of paper. There was a crease across the middle of it, close to breaking, pressed many times. He held it against his chest with both hands on the two ends. He did not hand it to anyone.

The sceptre slid down from his side, and the half-open book at its top turned over to its last leaf. That leaf had no number. It was the last to fall, and it landed on the slabs face up. She did not pick it up.

The hall began to fade. The walls drew back, and the mosaic slabs turned, one by one, into rough stone surfaces. The white lime in the seams was blown away by the wind. The tape came loose from the four walls and dropped away in loops. The wind rolled it to the edge of the steps, stopped it there, and then rolled it away again. The red on the backs of the audience seats was gone. The lights went out one after another, and by the time the last one went dark she was standing at the edge of the pedestal.

Beyond the pedestal there was no ground. There were steps, going down one after another, and the break was one step wide.

※

There was no wind in the Star Corridor.

Swan did not crouch down. She counted. On the thirty-first step, across the break, the line was still there, deep at one end and shallow at the other. The line on the forty-fourth step was shallower than the one above it, and the end of the stroke was ragged, curling up. The fifty-seventh step had another line. This was the third line. Beside it was another, faint mark. Someone had rubbed it smooth, so that only a patch brighter than the rest was left, and neither its start nor its end could be found. It had been rubbed with care. It did not look as if it had been rubbed out in passing.

She stopped on the fifty-seventh step for two breaths. The third line was so level that it did not look as if a hand had cut it.

She did not know who had cut the first three. She thought for three breaths about what a line was, and could not work it out. A line was only a line. It showed only that someone had stopped here, and then gone on down.

She breathed in for three beats and out for five, and went down. On each out-breath her foot came down on one step. On each in-breath it came down on the next. Two breaths, two steps.

On each step, the sole of her foot touched the edge of the stone first, then its flat top. The top had very fine streaks, worn in by people who had walked down these steps one at a time, many years before. She did not think about who they were. Her footsteps landed without an echo. The Star Corridor gave back no echo, and her breath did not come back to her either.

On the sixtieth and sixty-third steps there was nothing on the break. The stone was cold and very dry, and when she put a hand on it there was no damp. The break on the seventieth step was new. The stone there was brighter than elsewhere, and there was not a single mark on the cut face.

She crouched in front of that step. The flat ring on her left wrist turned, and the outermost scale flipped out, its edge pressed against the stone. She pulled hard, outward. Two chips of stone fell into the break and were gone.

A line. Short, not slanted. Both ends equally deep. The end of the stroke had no ragged edge and did not curl up.

She stood up and drew the ring back in. The fourth line. She had cut it.

A little cold pink light rose through the break from beneath. This time the light was slanted, coming from the west. She looked down. Far below the break was a black expanse of water, with no boat on it and no wind. On the water, a grain of white light sat still, without flickering. Its edge was thin, a white ring, and it lit the edge of the water too. That was the sea.

She looked at that grain of light for a long time. It did not move.

“The far side of the sea has lit up too. Someone should go and meet it.”

When she had finished, the sound went out, touched nothing, and fell onto the steps. The light beneath the break did not answer.

She walked back up, counting. From the seventieth step to the first, one step at a time. At the top, the stone under her feet had changed. It was the slabs of the square.

※

The mist over Stone Steps Square had cleared. It had drawn back from beyond the river, bit by bit, first onto the water and then under the trees along the bank. The leaves came out of the mist one by one, an ordinary green. The sky to the east was grey-white, with no sun and no cloud.

She crouched, hooked the last loop of tape off her right ankle, and dropped it at the edge of the steps. It landed on the stone without a sound. She stood up on the top step and looked north, a little west.

In the sky, the disc was still hanging there. A piece was missing from the bright face. The edge of the gap was even, and behind it was grey-white sky with nothing hanging in it. The pale violet edge was still on the outer rim, the black mouth was still there, and the very fine white ring beside the mouth had broken off for a stretch. On the dark face, the specks of light were still there, in patches.

A patch of the sky over Paris was empty.

The tower stood whole at the far end of the square. From base to top, nothing was missing. Four legs, the arches, three platforms. The steel frame was Eiffel brown, neither bright nor dark. She counted the ring of lamps around the base: three hundred and thirty-six sodium lamps, and only eleven were lit. The lit ones gave a thin gold that clung to the steel and did not spread. Along the lower edge of one level, seventy-two names, eighteen to a face. Each name had only a little gold on it.

At the top, the four beams began to turn, and they turned out of step. One went first, another came after, and the four never lined up. The beams swept the square one at a time. They reached the steps, stretched the shadows of the people there very long, and then drew back.

In the middle of the tower, a very large thing had been wedged between the steel frames, and it had not moved. Now it moved. It slid out from between two of the legs and hung over the square, not far off the ground. Its shadow fell on the slabs first, huge, slab after slab, and passed over the steps and over the people sitting there. The people sitting did not move out of the way.

The bow was a wedge, tapering at the front to a chisel point. The bridge was low, with glass on three sides. The hull was grey-white, and a band of orange ran from bow to stern. From this distance it was only a thin line. Under the bridge a row of numbers had been sprayed on: LM-1-04. The lettering was grey and very small.

There was no name on the hull. The hatch was open, and the light inside it was white. There was no one in the doorway.

Someone on the steps looked up.

Of the people below the steps, some had their faces raised and some still had their heads down, looking at their shoes. She looked down at them from above, and not one of them looked her way.

Halfway down the steps, a boy crouched and picked a leaf of gold out of a crack between the stones. There was a number on it. He did not look at it. He put it in his coat pocket.

A few students came running out of the metro entrance, their bags bouncing behind them. At the foot of the steps they stopped, looked around, and sat down.

The flower seller had changed the water in the buckets. It was clear now, and the cut ends of the stems were fresh. A woman pushing a trolley of vegetables went past. Her wheels rolled over the cracks between the stones, with a clunk, then another, then another.

The café’s roller shutter was pulled up halfway. The chair by the door had moved half a step closer again, and was now a palm’s width from the socket. On the steps beside the socket a paper cup had been set down, its steam rising. The people inside did not come out. The street lamp across the road was still on. It was lit in daylight, and the yellow of its bulb was faint.

Below the steps, the middle-aged man stood at the edge of the crowd, gripping the roll of paper. His knuckles had gone white. No one spoke to him, and he did not go looking for anyone. Further off on the main road, a bus went through the junction, and there were people in its windows.

On the bottom three steps, the dancer stood with both hands hanging at her sides.

※

On the bottom three steps, she watched the woman come down past the ninth step without stopping.

The woman’s left foot came down on the slab without a sound. The upper of her right shoe scraped across the stone with a dull sound. As she passed, the woman did not look at the dancer’s face. The woman was looking at the dancer’s feet.

She lifted the insole of her right shoe.

That one was still in there. It had been folded into four, and its edges had gone soft, held up by the fuzz round the hole. She pulled it out, unfolded it, and looked once. It had only a number on it and a red stamp. No reason. She knew there was no reason.

She folded it back into four and dropped it into the bin by the iron railing. The paper went in and came to rest on top of an empty drinks bottle.

There was no shift today. The warehouse had not called. She did not go to the warehouse, and she did not ask.

The man in the grey coat at the far end of the square had gone. The silver clip on his chest had gone too.

She crouched down, undid the laces of her right shoe, and tied them again, tightly. She took the lace round the instep, pulled it one more turn, and tied it above the ankle. The laces of her left shoe stayed as they were.

A cleaning lorry came across the square from the far end, its hose aimed at the slabs. Water ran down the edges of the steps and stopped at the bottom one, where it pooled in a small patch. The water came up to the tip of her shoe, and she moved back a step. The driver wore dark gloves and did not look at her.

The speaker had been charged up at the socket by the café door. It had taken an hour, and the battery light had reached the third segment. She carried it back and set it on the bottom step, leaning against the stone. The beige tape round the handle had been wound three times, covering a grey section underneath.

She laid the cardboard on the steps, over the two knee marks. It was a returned box from the warehouse, opened out and flattened, and a line of writing on it had not been wiped off. The morning wind blew up from below the steps and lifted a corner of the cardboard. She reached out and pressed it down.

She had taken the photo of the show. It showed this pair, set at the edge of the steps, the toe of the right shoe already worn into a black hole. She took three shots and sent the second, because in the first the hole was too small to see.

She lifted her head once and looked at the tower. At the top, the four beams had not lined up. She lowered her head and pressed play.

When the drumbeat came in, she stood up and counted three beats.

One. Two. Three.

On the first beat she thought of the laces. On the second, the battery. On the third, she did not think of the paper.

When the first beat landed from the old speaker, she laughed once, the laugh coming before the movement. Only then did she move. On the steps, people sat down to watch one after another.

Her right foot came down first, a little early. That was hers. Her left foot followed, half a beat late. That was hers too. Her knees bent all the way down and straightened again, without a sound.

An old man sat down on the steps and turned a page of the newspaper in his hand. Two students sat on the fifth step and put their bags by their feet. A woman sat on the third step and began to hum along with the speaker. It was not until the third time through that she noticed she was humming. She stopped for a moment, then went on. The people at the café door did not come out. They only moved the chair a little closer to the socket again. A chair leg scraped the slabs, one short sound.

She counted the time. The speaker could play for only forty minutes. When she reached the thirty-first minute, she stopped, took a drink of water, and set the bottle back on the corner of the cardboard.

The paper cup was still on the steps by the socket. She went over, picked it up, and took a sip. It was hot, and she drew her tongue back. When she put it down again, the mouth of the cup faced the door.

She did not look at the door.

The next evening, she came down from the ninth step.

There was no one on the ninth step. She did not go round it. There was a crack along the edge of the ninth step, and a little green had grown in it. Each time she passed, she did not look.

The chair stood by the socket with its back to the steps. She sat down on it and plugged the speaker’s lead into the socket. The battery light came on and reached the first segment. She did not move the chair back. The hole in the toe of her right shoe was still there, and she had not mended it. The cardboard lay at her feet, with the two knee marks on it, and two palm marks, and the palm marks were deeper. From inside the door came the sound of cups being wiped. It went on for a while and did not stop.

Two more people had come onto the steps. One sat on the fifth step and watched. The other stood at the edge of the bottom three steps, keeping time with her speaker. The beat stayed the same, one loop taking one minute and twenty seconds. On the first beat he was early. On the second he was late. On the third his right foot came down first, heavily, and his body rocked forward and then pulled back. His arms were still across his chest. They had not opened. He did not touch her speaker, and he did not touch the chair.

The dancing was ugly.

His shoes were new. The soles were white and had never been worn. The laces were tied tight. The two shoes were laced differently: the right one had one more turn round it.

She saw it. There was no ruler in her bag.

She had a technical remark, and it turned over once in her mouth.

She did not correct him.