Ivan Yefremov - Andromeda (A Space-Age Tale)

Mven Mass was afraid of what might happen if the music demanded still greater acceleration of the dance. She danced not only with her legs and arms — the girl’s entire body responded to the blazing fire of the music with equally searing flames of life. The African thought that if the women of ancient India had been like Chara, then the poet had been right in likening them to flaming bowls and in giving that name to the women’s fete.

Chara’s reddish sunburn turned to a bright copper in the glow of the stage and the floor. Mven Mass’s heart beat wildly. The woman he had seen on the fabulous planet of Epsilon Toucanis had skin of just that colour. At that time, also, he had learned there existed such a thing as the inspiration of a body capable of employing its movements, its delicate changes of beautiful forms, to express the most profound shades of feeling, fantasy and passion, to express a prayer for happiness.

Up to that moment he had known nothing but the urge to overcome the unattainable distance of ninety parsecs but now Mven Mass realized that flowers just as beautiful as the carefully nurtured picture of the distant planet were to be found in the inexhaustible treasure-house of terrestrial beauty. But his long-cherished urge to achieve an unattainable dream did not pass so quickly. Chara’s likeness to the red-skinned daughter in the world of Epsilon Toucanis only served to strengthen the determination of the Director of the Outer Stations. If so much joy was to be felt from one Chara Nandi what would the world be like where the majority of the women were like her?!

Evda Nahl and Veda Kong, excellent dancers themselves, were staggered at this, the first of Chara’s dances that they had seen. Veda, anthropologist and specialist in the history of the ancient races, had come to the decision that in the past the women of Gondwana, the southern countries, had exceeded the men in number because men were often killed hunting dangerous wild beasts. Later when the despotic states of the Ancient East were established in the densely populated countries of the south, the men continued to be killed in wars, by religious excesses and by the whims of the despots. The daughters of the south went through a period of the strictest selection that developed the finer points of adaptation. In the north, where the population was scantier and nature less bounteous, there had not been such despotism in the Dark Ages. More men survived, women were more valued and lived a more dignified life.

Veda followed Chara’s every gesture and conceived the idea that in all her movements there was an amazing duality — they were at once gentle and predatory. The gentleness came from the graceful movements and unbelievable suppleness of the body and the predatory impression was created by the abrupt changes, turns and poses that followed each other with the elusive rapidity that is natural in the wild beast. This feline litheness had been achieved by the dark-skinned daughters of Gondwana in the thousands of years of the struggle for existence through which the debased and enslaved women of the southern continents had lived… but in Chara it was harmonically combined with the small firm features of a Creto-Hellenic face.

The dissonant sounds of some percussion instruments merged in a short, slower adagio. The urgent, ever swifter rhythm of the rise and fall of human emotions was expressed in the dance by the alternation of movements full of meaning and their almost complete cessation when the dancer turned into a motionless statue. Slumbering emotions were aroused, flared up stormily, wilted in their exhaustion, died and were born again, stormy and untasted — life, fettered and struggling against the inevitable march of time, against the clear-cut, merciless definiteness of duty and fate. Evda Nahl felt that the psychological basis of the dance was something so near to her that her cheeks became flushed and her breathing quickened.

Mven Mass did not know that the composer had written the ballet suite specially for Chara Nandi, but he was no longer afraid of the wild tempo when he saw how well the girl was coping with it. Scarlet waves of light embraced her copper body, gave off crimson splashes from her strong legs, were drowned in the dark whirls of velvet and turned the white silk to the pink of dawn. Her arms, raised and thrown back, slowly ceased their motion over her head. Suddenly, without any finale, the music broke off in a stormy clangour of high notes and the red lights came to a standstill and were extinguished. The high dome of the building was flooded with its usual light. The tired girl bowed her head and her thick hair covered her face. The thousands of golden lights were followed by a dull noise. The audience were doing Chara the greatest of all honours — they were thanking her by standing up and stretching their clasped hands towards her. Chara, who, before the performance, had not known a tremor, lost her self-possession, threw back the hair from her face and ran away, after a glance towards the upper galleries. Mven Mass knew then why the artist had been so calm — he knew his model.

The Master of Ceremonies announced an entr’acte. Mven Mass hurried to look for Chara while Veda Kong and Evda Nahl went out on to the gigantic opaque glass staircase, a thousand metres wide, that led from the stadium straight down to the sea. The evening twilight, lucid and warm, tempted the two women to bathe, following the example of thousands of other spectators from the fete.

“No wonder I was attracted to Chara Nandi the moment I saw her,” said Evda Nahl. “She’s a remarkable artist. Today we have seen the Dance of the Power of Life, in which is incorporated the best of everything that constitutes the foundation of the human soul and is frequently its ruler. That must contain something of the erotic dances of the ancients!”

“Now I understand Cart Sann, for beauty really is more important than we think. Beauty is the happiness and the meaning of life — how well he said that! And your definition is a true one!” agreed Veda, kicking off a shoe and putting her foot into the warm water that splashed against the steps.

“It is a true one if the psychic forces are born of a healthy body full of energy,” Evda Nahl corrected her as she removed her clothes and jumped into the transparent water. Veda swam after her and they went together to a huge rubber island that shone silver about a mile away from the stadium. The flat surface of the island, level with the water, was surrounded by rows of shelters in the shape of shells of mother-of-pearl plastic, big enough to screen three or four people from the sun and wind and to isolate them from their neighbours.

The two women lay down on the soft, swaying floor of a “shell,” breathing deeply of the eternally fresh smell of the sea.

“You’ve got beautifully tanned since I met you on the beach!” said Veda looking at her companion. “Have you been at the seaside or does it come from sunburn pills?”

“SB pills,” admitted Evda, “I’ve been in the sun for only two days, yesterday and today. I haven’t got such wonderful skin as Chara Nandi.”

“Don’t you really know where Renn Bose is?” continued Veda.

“I know approximately and that is sufficient to worry me!” answered Evda Nahl, softly.

“Do you really want…” began Veda and then stopped but Evda lifted her lazily closed eyelids and looked her straight in the eyes.

“It seems to me that Renn Bose is somehow… helpless, like an undeveloped boy,” Veda objected, hesitantly, “and you’re so strong, you have an intellect that is the equal of any man’s. One always feels that inside you there is a steel rod, your will-power….”

“Renn Bose told me the same. But you’re wrong in your estimation of him, you’re as one-sided as Renn Bose himself. He is a man with a bold and powerful intellect and a terrific capacity for work. Even today there are few to equal him on our planet. It is the comparison of his other qualities with his great talents that makes them seem undeveloped because they are just about the average or even puerile, perhaps. You were right in calling Renn a boy, he is, but at the same time he’s a hero in the true sense of the word. Take Darr Veter — there’s something boylike in him, too, but with him it’s just a superabundance of physical strength and not the lack of it, like it is with Renn.”