Julia Franck - The Blind Side of the Heart

So there was no Anita Berber, but instead three musicians soon gathered on the stage, a trombonist, a clarinettist and a trumpeter. And while Helene still thought that the long-drawn-out notes were just tuning up, some of the guests began dancing. Helene was pushed on through the crowd, Fanny handed in her cape at the cloakroom and, without asking, removed Helene’s hat. Lucinde ordered champagne and glasses. They whispered, wasn’t that Margo Lion, standing over there among a cluster of people? The Baron’s eyes were turned only on Helene; they clung to her, to her face, her shoulders, her hands. His glances made her feel both safe and uncomfortable. The bare nape of her neck was probably a challenge to him, and not unwelcome, as Helene said to herself, but very exciting. Suddenly she felt breath on her shoulder and the Baron said, in his soft voice that almost squeaked when he tried to make it sound firm: Helene, you’re losing your scarf. Helene looked down at herself, at a loss, and then at the Baron, who seemed to her even smaller than usual tonight. Once again his lips approached; he was almost kissing her throat. I can see the little dimples in your shoulders, they’re sending me crazy.

Helene couldn’t help laughing. Someone pushed her gently in the back.

You’d better put that scarf round your shoulders again or other men will discover you.

She supposed the Baron was trying to claim rights to her bare shoulders. Helene turned. Fanny and Lucinde stood behind her; they had met Bernard and a friend of his. Fanny told her friends and her nieces to take a glass each from the tray. It was lucky that this club was so noisy. Helene didn’t want to answer the Baron; she draped the scarf casually over her elbows. Batting her false eyelashes was exciting too, and she had no objection at all if other men saw her little dimples.

Leontine greeted a young man and introduced him to her: his name was Carl Wertheimer. The music was so loud now that Leontine had to shout, and the young man put his hands over his ears. He was one of her pathology students, Leontine shouted, he’d smuggled himself into her course, he was really studying philosophy and languages — Latin, Greek — and modern literature too, he was obviously going to be a poet. Carl Wertheimer shook his head vigorously. Never. Oh yes, said Leontine, laughing, she’d once seen him standing in a group of students reciting a poem, she was sure he’d written it himself. Carl Wertheimer seemed bewildered by all this. He was a perfectly ordinary student, he said, and if he did quote Ovid or Aristotle, that wasn’t to be compared with the efforts of the rising generation of writers to emulate them. Anyway, he added, he wouldn’t have the courage to confess to such attempts of his own in the presence of these clever ladies. Leontine ran her hand over his hair in a sisterly way, she made him seem like a small child. Helene looked searchingly at him; his eyes were level with hers, his slender physique was that of a boy. He was probably about Helene’s own age. She looked at him for a moment like someone who might be hers, but all his attention was given to Leontine. It was obvious that Carl Wertheimer looked up to her and not just because she appeared to be several centimetres taller than he was. Leontine was an unusual woman and no doubt he valued her as a teacher; perhaps he was a little in love with her.

Other musicians joined the three on stage, also playing trombones, clarinets and trumpets. The notes dragged along, the beat lurched and swayed. To Helene’s surprise, more and more people around her began to dance, and soon she could hardly see the dance floor as the parquet under her feet vibrated in time to the music. Fanny and Bernard were ahead of everyone else, Lucinde took Bernard’s friend’s hand, even Martha and Leontine mingled with the dancers and only the Baron held back. He stood guard over the tray of glasses, his back to the wall, and he never took his eyes off Helene, who still stood there undecided. A hand was laid gently on her arm. Would she like to dance, asked a clean-shaven man; he took the glass from her hand and led her away with him. He held tight to Helene with one hand, as if he had to be careful, as if the music might lure her away; it was slow at first, then fast, and his other hand, as if by chance, touched her bare arm while they danced. The music spared nothing, no living creature, it went through her, took every particle of her and transformed the room into fragments of time. A moment ago the place had been quiet, motionless, but now it was in uproar, or so it seemed to Helene, an uproar that not only set every mol-ecule and every organ swaying but strained the frames of the dancers’ bodies and the bounds of the room itself to the utmost without breaking them apart. The music stretched, filled the place with a dull glow, glittering softly, a spray of delicate melodies no longer observing ordinary musical rules; it bent the bodies of the dancers, doubled them up, raised them again, reeds blowing in the wind. Once the clean-shaven man put his hand on Helene’s hips and she jumped, but he only wanted to keep her from colliding with another dancing couple. Helene looked around, she saw Leontine’s throat, her short dark hair; Helene moved sideways, making her way past the bodies that bent towards her and then turned away, tracing a winding path through the dancers, and the clean-shaven man followed every step she took, past other dancers, ducking below their arms, until Helene caught Martha’s hand and saw Leontine’s smile. The clean-shaven man gestured frantically, looked indignant, did a handstand and landed on his feet again. Helene couldn’t help laughing. She tried to follow the beat, her shoulders and arms moved, the people around her writhed and swirled in the music, became entangled with each other, trod on one another’s feet. The music reminded Helene of being on a swing: if someone gave you a push the impetus of the swing carried everything away with it, made straight for its target, but in the next bar it began to falter. It made you swing and stretch your legs first this way, then that, and a reeling, rolling, spinning movement began, an elliptical circling, ever-decreasing with its own logic. Martha’s head was nodding alarmingly, her hair was coming loose, she flung out her arms in Leontine’s direction as if she were drowning. Helene saw her glazed eyes, their gaze veiled by night, unable to focus on anyone now, unable to recognize anyone. She waved to Martha, but now Martha was leaning on Leontine with a drunken, rather foolish smile on her face. The trumpet cut in strongly, provided impetus, the dancers began sweating, the women’s bare arms and shoulders gleamed in the narrow beams of light cast by the small lamps. Next moment Helene couldn’t see the violet blue of Leontine’s dress any more and Martha’s maudlin smile had disappeared; a new rhythm began. Helene looked around, but she could see neither Leontine nor Martha. Meanwhile, she caught sight of the back of her clean-shaven dancing partner, now dancing with another young woman.

Helene found herself alone in the midst of the excited crowd. The music surrounded her, possessed her, trying to permeate her and leave her at the same time. Helene flung out her arms and her legs. Anxiety took over her body; she knew none of the dance movements, but she did still know where the floor was. Even if the floor gave way, her feet were landing on it and rising up again, so feet and floor depended on each other. Helene tried to reach the edge of the crowd, where she thought the Baron might be, although she couldn’t see his hat, nor could she see any of the rest of her party, but the dancers pushed her further and further into the crowd, and her legs never stopped following the rhythm. There was nowhere you could more easily disappear than in the midst of all these dancers. Helene gave herself up to the dance; the sound of the clarinets chased her feet on, the musical beat was catching up with her, she was punching holes in the air with her arms.