Clemens Meyer - All the Lights

She stands in front of the mirror, makes a curtsey and smiles and sticks out her chest; her brother doesn’t like that. ‘You’re thirteen,’ he says, ‘the boys’ll come soon enough,’ but her brother can’t see her now, turning and smiling in front of the mirror and pushing first her left leg and then her right leg forward.

Her brother is somewhere in the big hall, boxing. He took her along the first time, ‘So you get out and meet people, Alina,’ no, he said ‘Alinchen,’ she doesn’t like that, it means something like ‘little Alina’ in German, he told her. ‘Alinchen,’ he said and danced in front of her, throwing straight rights and lefts at the air. They walked there, all the way from the harbour to the training hall, past the big containers and the dockers, the cranes and the ships, then past the market where their father sometimes sends them to buy fish; the fishmongers shout and yell, she’s never seen so many fat women and she presses herself close to her brother as he holds her hand tight. Downtown, between all the people and the shops he doesn’t dance any more, only throwing straights and hooks again in the side streets and alleyways, teasing her: ‘Alinchen, little sister, you’re much too small still.’

No, she thinks in front of the mirror as she moves her hips like a belly dancer and sticks out her chest, I’m not all that small. She dances in front of the big mirror and doesn’t even hear the voices from the hall, the shouts, the trampling of feet and the smack of gloves on punching bags and sparring partners, she closes her eyes and she’s all alone. The woman who used to live in the room next to her and her brother showed her what real belly dancing looks like, but she’s not there any more. She had a cassette recorder, and some evenings they could hear music from her room, strange laments but not sad, not too loud because of the rules, and if they had their window open they closed it because the sea outside roared and the gulls and the ships made all their noise. Sometimes she went over with her brother, very quietly because their father, who lived next door with another man they called ‘Uncle Toni’ even though he wasn’t their real uncle, their father didn’t want them to go out in the evenings. The door is just pushed to and they open it cautiously. The woman is standing in the middle of the room, in the dark, dancing. Alina can make out the slight curve of her belly, moving in circles to the rhythm of the music, the woman holding up her hands next to her face, now she lifts them higher and places her palms together. They stand in the doorway and watch the woman, who doesn’t seem to see them; now her belly is a little round ball, then it disappears in the shadows, and now all they can see is her hips, and Alina puts her hands on her belly and wishes it were so lovely and round and not so flat and thin, she feels her hip bones and wishes she could dance and be one with the music like the woman moving there in the dark. The spotlight of a passing ship falls through the window onto the dancing woman’s face, and Alina sees that it’s twisted, as if she were very sad and about to cry, but she’s silent and dancing. Then the ship’s light disappears, it’s dark again in the room, the floor begins to sway, here come the waves from that other ship, it must have been a big ship, and their ship pitches and tosses, glasses clink somewhere in the room, and her brother holds onto the door frame, and she holds onto her brother, but the woman doesn’t seem to notice anything and dances … quietly, thinks Alina.

She throws a right and feels the world champion’s nose breaking. Alina knows her name but she doesn’t say it, doesn’t think it … she throws another right, she sees the crack in the middle of the mirror, the floor’s going to sway, she thinks, I’m going to make it sway, and you’re going to fall. Alina moves her torso loosely from her hips.

‘Hey kid, you’re doing that right.’ She opens her eyes and turns around. An old man in a sweat suit is standing behind her, white hair and pretty fat. She feels herself blushing and folds her arms in front of her chest. ‘But we only dance in the ring here, kid.’ He smiles and beckons her over. ‘You here with your brother, are you?’ She takes a couple of steps in his direction and nods. ‘But if you want to come along you’ve got to join in, kid.’ She shakes her head and wants to go back to their room on the ship. She hears all the noise of the gulls and the ships when she opens the window. ‘Can’t just stand by the mirror and watch,’ the old man says, clenching his fist in front of his chest. ‘You’re a good mover, no need to be scared … no need. Come on, let me show you a couple of things.’ He waves a hand over at the punching bags, men standing by them and hitting them, some of them dancing with their feet and moving their torsos. ‘But my shoes …’ She points at her feet. She’s wearing suede boots, almost up to her knees, her brother gave her them, he and some of the other boys from the ship went to the warehouses one night, and when he came back he said: ‘You’re getting a treat tomorrow, little sister.’

Their father told him off, ‘Where did those shoes come from, they’re much too expensive,’ but her brother gave him a shiny black leather jacket and said, ‘That’s for you, father, we bought them cheap from the Arabs.’ Their father turned away and looked out to sea over the rail; he doesn’t much like Arabs, but he likes the shiny black leather jacket and wears it every day.

‘My shoes,’ she says, but the old man shrugs.

‘Take your jacket off, roll your sleeves up and come with me.’ He turns around and walks over to the punching bags. She stays where she is for a moment, looks in the mirror, tries to smile and sticks out her chest, then she follows him.

‘Little sister,’ calls her brother from somewhere in the hall, ‘Alinchen, you want to box? You’re much too small still, and your shoes …’

She looks at her feet and takes a left and then a right straight behind it, right on the nose, and she pulls up her guard. ‘Damn,’ shouts the old man, ‘watch out, go back.’ And she goes back, goes back to the ropes and touches her glove briefly to her nose, not broken, she thinks and waits and draws her opponent over to her on the ropes and hits out. The right hook she took was good, she only notices that now, she’s slightly dizzy, the floor seems to be swaying, but she hits out, left, left, left, two straights, a hook, head, body, head, ‘Right,’ shouts the old man, ‘show her your right,’ and then the girl’s sitting on the floor of the ring in front of her and looking up at her, eyes wide. The referee pushes her away and she goes into the neutral corner and looks at her shoes as she walks; she has a tiny stone with a hole in it on the lace of her left shoe, her father gave it to her. ‘From back home,’ he said, ‘from the mountains, it’ll bring you luck.’ She looks at the audience, the hall is pretty empty still, a long way to go before the main fight, she can make out a couple of friends of her brother’s fairly far back, boys from the asylum seekers’ ship, she raises her fist, they jump up and wave at her and call out: ‘Alina, Alina,’ and she hears the referee counting. ‘… three, four, five …’ Stay down, girl, she thinks, the floor sways, stay down.

‘So, kid, you OK?’ She turns around, the old man’s behind her, she didn’t hear him coming in. ‘Want to be alone a bit? You’re starting soon.’

‘No,’ she says, ‘yes,’ and sees the old man putting his hand on the back of her neck in the mirror, then she feels it and she’s perfectly calm. ‘This is your night,’ says the old man, ‘this is gonna be your night,’ and she sees herself nodding.

‘Time for you to warm up,’ says the old man, and he takes her arms and pulls her boxing gloves on carefully, ‘time for us to warm up.’