Colum McCann - Dancer

A tall thin boy picked at the springs of his watch with a penknife, carving time. The watch was on a chain, and he let it swing to his hips. Two brothers arrived each Thursday from the pedestrian underpass, fresh from the factory baths, their dark hair preceding their scuffed shoes. An old veteran stood under a tree. He was able to whistle many of the great Liszt rhapsodies. He was known to say aloud: Why earn your joy only when you are dead? He continued until morning, when the distant sound of the river steamers whistled him out. Sometimes the curtains of the rooms across the square opened and closed, figures appearing, disappearing. Black Volgas moved away from the curbside and went down the dark streets. Nervous laughter rang out. Cigarette papers were rolled and licked. Snuffboxes were unfurled. Nobody drank — drinking would loosen our tongues and give to the living the breath of the dead. Sweat stained the rims of our collars. We stamped our feet, blew warm air into our gloves, moved our bodies beyond ordinary wakefulness, and beyond that once again, until at times it felt as if we would never sleep.

The night went by, our desires hidden, as if sewn inside coat sleeves. It was not that we even took our coats off, it was the touch, the shiver of recognition when our sleeves met as we lit each other’s cigarettes. Hatred too. Hatred for such similarity.

The theater doors swung open late, allowing actors, dancers, stagehands out. Sometimes they walked all the way from the Kirov, twenty minutes. They leaned against the ironwork, wrapped in their scarves, gloves, leg warmers. A sandy-haired boy swung his foot into the air and propped it on a prong of the fence, stretched, his head to his knees, his breath steaming, his leather cap tipped backwards on his head. His body had an ease to it, his toes his feet his legs his chest his shoulders his neck his mouth his eyes. His lips were extraordinarily red, and his mouth was made more red again by the eyes. Even the leather hat seemed shaped to the way that he pulled it on and off. Most of the time he didn’t stay long in the square, he was privileged and there were other places for him to go — basements, cupolas, apartments — but once or twice he remained, kicking his foot to the top of the fence. We passed, inhaled the smell of him. He never said a word to us.

We waited for him to reappear in the square, but he became more recognizable, his face in the newspapers, on posters. The thought of him lay with us.

When the rumor of morning arrived, the streetlights flickered briefly and we would part. We unraveled into the streets, some looking for the boy with the pocket watch, or the factory brothers, or the dancer with the sandy hair, the print of his foot on the damp pavement, his overcoat parted by walking, his scarf flying out from the back of his neck. Sometimes, by the stone steps that descended to a canal’s black waters, the light of the moon was broken by a shadow’s stride and we turned to follow. Even then, so close to morning, there was always the thought that water might hide its flowing under ice.

Every Friday the drunks roll past, loud and foul with whiskey, reeking of piss and dustbins, and, as he has done for years now, he reaches out the window, handing each of them a shilling, so almost every tramp around Covent Garden knows that the place for a little money is the factory on the far side of the Royal, where the middle-aged man, the bald one with the spectacles, at the second to last window, open, but only on a Friday, leans out and listens to the stories — my mother’s caught up with consumption, my uncle lost his wooden leg, my aunt Josephine got her knickers in a twist —and, no matter what the story, he says to the drunks, Here you go, mate, shilling after shilling, much of his wages, so that instead of taking the Tube back to his room in Highbury he walks all the way, to save the money, a good five miles, stooped, his flat hat on, nodding to ladies and paperboys and more drunks, some of whom recognize him and try to charm another shilling from him, which he cannot give because he has calculated exactly enough for lodging and food, he says, Sorry, mate, tips his hat and walks on, a shopping bag banging against his calf, all the way through Covent Garden and Holborn and Grays Inn, along Rosebury Avenue, up the Essex Road onto Newington Green, the sky darkening as he goes, and he turns left on Poet’s Road, walks to the redbrick lodging house, number 47, where the landlady, a widow from Dorchester, greets him airily at the front door, by the mock-ebony clock with the two pawing horses, and he bows slightly to her, saying, Evening, Mrs. Bennett, and makes his way up the stairs, passing the pictures of ducks on the wall, straightening them if another lodger has bumped against them, sixteen steps, into his room, where at last he removes his shoes, thinking he must polish them, and then he unloosens his tie, pours himself a Scotch from the silver flask hidden behind the bedstead, just a nip, sighing deeply as it hits his throat, opens the shopping bag, sets the shoes out on his work desk, just finishing touches — a shank to be trimmed, a wing block to be extended, a drawstring that requires threading through, a heel to be cut down — neat, precise, and when he is finished he wraps them each in plastic, making sure there are no creases in the wrapping, since he has a reputation to maintain, the ballerinas, the choreographers, the opera houses, they all seek him out, sending their specifications,

a foot so wide at the toes and so narrow at the heel he must stretch the shoe to accommodate it,

the fourth toe abnormally longer than the third, something he solves with the simple loosening of a stitch,

the shoe that needs a harder shank, a higher back, a softer sole,

he is well-known for his tricks, they talk about him, the dancers with their difficulties or those just simply fussy, writing him letters, sending him telegrams, sometimes even visiting him at the factory — meet your maker! — especially those from the Royal Ballet, so delicate and fine and appreciative, most of all Margot Fonteyn, his favorite, who once got an amazing three performances out of one pair of toe shoes, her requirements being terribly intricate, a very short vamp, a low wing block, extra paste at the tips, wide pleats for grip, and he is the only maker she ever deals with, she adores him, she thinks him the perfect gentleman, and in return she is the only ballerina whose picture hangs above his worktable— To Tom, with love, Margot —and it makes him shiver to think how she handles his shoes once she gets them, shattering the shank to make it more pliable, banging the shoe against doors to soften the box, bending the shoe over and over so it feels perfect on her feet, as if she has worn it forever, a thought which prompts a little smile as he puts the shoes away neatly on his bedroom shelf, steps into his pajamas, kneels down for two quick prayers, goes to bed, never dreaming of feet or shoes, and when he wakes he shuffles down the corridor to the shared bathroom, where he soaps and shaves, the whiskers grown gray in recent years, fills a kettle with tap water, returns to his room, puts the kettle on his stove, waits for it to whistle, makes himself a cup of tea, having put the milk on the windowsill overnight to keep it cool, then takes the stack of shoes from the shelf and sets once again to work, and he works all morning long, although Saturdays aren’t considered overtime, he doesn’t care, he enjoys the repetitions and differing demands, the women’s toe shoes so much more intricate and difficult than the ballet boots for men, the French with more of an eye for flair than the English, the softer leather pads demanded by the Spanish, the Americans who call their shoes slippers, and how he detests that word, slipper, like something out of a fairy tale, he often thinks of the violence a shoe takes, the pounding, the destruction, not to mention the tiny incisions, the surgery, the gentleness, the tricks he learned from his late father, who worked the same job for forty years,