Gregor von Rezzori - An Ermine in Czernopol

“Did you hurt yourself?” asked Madame Aritonovich. “Let me see you move your feet. Nothing hurts?”

“No,” said Tanya. “Please, may I continue right now? And from the beginning, if that’s all right?”

Madame Aritonovich helped her to her feet, face-to-face, and looked her in the eye. “Fine, from the beginning, then.”

I’ve occasionally wondered whether Madame Aritonovich might have seen those first movements Tanya made by looking in the mirror, but that’s impossible, because she was walking away from her, in the direction of Herr Tarangolian, who was sitting in his usual corner. In any case she had turned her back to Tanya and was heading toward the prefect with such a triumphantly relieved smile that I, a rather clumsy snowflake deployed close to that same corner, couldn’t help being amazed. The prefect lifted his heavy eyes as she approached his chair, and said: “How did you do that, you sorceress?”

“It wasn’t me,” said Madame Aritonovich. “Could I please have a light, Coco?” I saw how her hands were shaking. She lit her cigarette with the match he offered, and only then did she turn around to look at Tanya.

“This is one of the few truly miraculous events I have witnessed in my entire long life,” said the prefect. Madame Aritonovich did not respond. She was focused on Tanya’s dancing.

“Ahh,” said the prefect, gasping with glee. “Fiokla — such a port des bras ! But don’t pretend — that was you, you’re the one who brought it out of her.” He expressed his delight in an artificial excitement. “I admit, the child was always talented, we agreed on that from the very beginning, but this, this is brilliant. Brava, brava! ” He applauded. “You see …” He played the awestruck admirer with such verve that he wound up being truly moved. “What balance, what elevation, what ballon !”

( Ballon refers to a special trick in dance, or better, the divinely given ability of a ballet dancer to appear to hold a position in the air, as if released from gravity. The effect is attained by the dancer’s rapidity in assuming the desired position during a jump, which makes the flight seem more drawn out, relaxed, and full of élan.)

“She already had all of that,” said Madame Aritonovich. “What she had lost, and has now regained, is herself.”

“I admire you, Fiokla Ignatieva,” said Herr Tarangolian. He kissed her hand ardently.

When the scene was over, Madame Aritonovich said: “Well done, Tanya. And the rest of you were excellent. Ice cream for everyone. Who would like to volunteer to go get it?”

We broke out in cheers. Herr Tarangolian got up, went over to Tanya, took the red carnation out of its buttonhole and presented it to her with a very seriously intended, exaggeratedly gallant bow.

“ Nu , finally something worth hearing: ice cream for everyone,” said Solly Brill. And then, to Tanya: “You could have come up a little sooner with the dance discipline and all that, you know.” He sighed. “Whimsical creatures, these women, by God!”

He had planted himself in the middle of the room and watched Herr Tarangolian, who had righted himself after bowing to Tanya and was gravely prancing back to Madame. “Herr Coco, you have a button open!”

The prefect looked down at himself, dismayed and embarrassed. “No, on your left gaiter,” said Solly. “Why? What did you think?”

That same afternoon Tanya was missing at home. They called for her but she didn’t come. They went looking for her, increasingly agitated, but she was nowhere to be found. We were forced to ask at the neighbors, but she hadn’t been seen there either. Uncle Sergei was sent into town to look for her at Madame Aritonovich’s or at the institute. But she wasn’t there, either. They were on the point of asking the prefect to contact the police when she came striding through the garden gate — accompanied by our father and Aunt Paulette.

Without paying any attention to our mother’s worried expression, our father went straight to his room. That was the sign of a rising crisis, and everyone took pains not to say a single unnecessary word.

“Where were you?” asked our mother.

“She was with me,” said Aunt Paulette, in place of Tanya. “I took her to visit some friends.”

“Couldn’t I have been told beforehand?”

“No,” said Aunt Paulette, without any further explanation, and likewise retreated.

Tanya kept quiet about her adventure. Everything remained very secretive and enigmatic.

But a few days later, over the after-dinner coffee — to which Herr Tarangolian no longer came — Aunt Paulette asked: “Will it be possible for me to borrow one of the children this afternoon?”

“I don’t know exactly what you mean?” said our mother.

“I need a chaperone. I’d like to visit some friends.”

“And might we know what ‘friends’ you have in mind?” asked Mama.

“Herr Adamowski. Don’t worry: the children’s moral health will not be placed in danger.”

“Wouldn’t it be more appropriate if Elvira went with you?”

“I can’t imagine she would much enjoy herself.”

“But you think that one of the children might?”

The conversation was clearly growing sharper by the second. Only Aunt Paulette stayed charmingly casual, her head leaned lazily against the back of the chair. “One of the children can drink chocolate and browse through some of the picture magazines. But if you think Elvira would be satisfied with that …”

“I have no intention,” said Aunt Elvira, poisonously.

And so I was chosen to accompany Aunt Paulette.

We passed through the Volksgarten the same way we went to school. Aunt Paulette hardly said a word to me, then stopped at a booth and bought me a bag of sticky candies, with the casual hint of contempt that was her way. But I preferred to go with her than with Aunt Elvira; she was eye-catchingly pretty with her dark-waved bobbed hair and wore her clothes with a natural elegance. She was tall and had beautiful legs, which she was already beginning to show back then — not past the knee, as later became common, but just enough to reveal the striking taper of her calves down to the ankle: when it came to fashion, Aunt Paulette was always ahead of the time, thanks to a certain intuition. Her flesh-toned silk stockings with the straight seam increased the appeal. I’ve always regretted that this seam, which connotes a slight disguise, has all but disappeared today. The overly thin hose-gauze looks like bare skin, causing the legs to appear naked. “Nakedness,” Uncle Sergei used to say, “has no charm. It is always the covering that awakens the erotic.”

Herr Adamowski lived on a side street off the Neuschulgasse, on the fourth floor of an ugly, dark apartment building. He had on a casual jacket of brown velvet with braid trim on the front. The homemade mixture of student-fraternity-jacket and Hussar uniform struck me as particularly revolting.

“Aha,” he said. “A young man as an escort, a true cavalier from top to toe — noble, elegant — my congratulations!” He bowed before me, sinking down on his clubfoot, and then righting himself by exchanging his swinging leg for his stamping leg. He had bared his saw-teeth and his monocle was flashing. “Take your coat off, dearest,” he said to Aunt Paulette, “and please step inside, the colloquium is all assembled.”

We stepped into a kind of library that also seemed to function as his living quarters. All the tables and even some chairs were littered with piles of books, magazines and newspapers. Three men rose as we entered; a woman in a brown silk dress stayed seated and took in our greeting with a nonchalant play of worldliness. Aunt Paulette introduced me with a mocking undertone as her chaperone. Everyone laughed.