A Day of Small Beginnings (34 page)

Her driver didn’t speak English. But moments later, when they pulled up to the Palace Residence Hotel, he pointed down the
block. “
Rynek Główny
—Market Square,” he said, nodding meaningfully, in what she took as a proud attempt to orient her to his city.

She had worked out an arrangement with Pronaszko to stay at this hotel, rather than at the less costly room in a private home
that he had originally offered her. She would have preferred the room because it afforded an opportunity to meet local people.
But its location had sent her mother into a state of extreme anxiety. “I want you to stay in the center of the city. I’ve
talked to people who’ve been to Kraków. It’s the safest area,” she’d insisted.

The Palace Residence Hotel, as it turned out, was a respectable turn-of-the-century European establishment, which, behind
its white stone facade, had a small, modest lobby. Ellen checked in at the front desk, accepted the porter’s offer of assistance
with her bags, and noted the hotel’s one truly palatial feature—a sweeping marble staircase better suited to women in evening
gowns than American girls in cowboy boots.

They took the elevator. On the third floor, she followed the porter down a wide hall to her room. She liked the architectural
detail of her door, tucked inside a niche. Inside, the entryway was almost blocked by an enormous armoire with a large oval
mirror. As she squeezed past it, she took a quick look at the rudimentary kitchenette to her left, next to which was a small
bathroom equipped, in the European manner, with a bidet and a poorly located showerhead.

The bedroom had an extremely high ceiling, which had the effect of dwarfing the low, lumpy double bed. Angled at its foot
was an upholstered wingback armchair.

The heavy decor might have put Ellen into a funk if the French windows hadn’t opened onto a view of flower boxes on the rococo
building across the way. Best of all, on a small table below the window was a gorgeous flower arrangement with a welcoming
message from Konstantin Pronaszko. He wrote, “I imagine that after your long journey you will want to have a quiet evening.
If you are not too tired, may I suggest you take a short stroll to Rynek Główny before you retire. It’s quite a nice introduction
to our city.” He closed with directions to the dance studio, where she was to meet him and the company the next morning at
ten o’clock, and his best wishes for their collaborative efforts.

Delighted, Ellen called home. “Mom, I
love
Kraków! The hotel is great. Perfect location. Konstantin Pronaszko sent me flowers! I’m going over to the studio at ten tomorrow!”
She said all this practically in one breath, not caring at all that she sounded like a ten-year-old. She wanted her mother
to understand that her father had missed seeing a whole other Poland. She only wished she could have told him so herself.
Again, as it had many times over the past months, the finality of his loss hit her hard.

“So the trip was all right? You managed to get to the train without any trouble?” her mother asked.

“No trouble. Just a lot of
schlepping,
” Ellen assured her, enjoying her grandpa Isaac’s word.

“That’s good. That’s very good.” Her mother sounded relieved. “Call me again tomorrow, after you meet the dance company. And,
Ellen, be careful in the street. I hear they drink heavily there.”

Her mother’s worry only reminded Ellen of her father’s ceaseless protectiveness, so especially fierce about Poland, and how
much she actually missed it now. She still imagined him so easily, in his robe in the study, fiddling with the blue Venetian
paperweight, and a longing for him passed over her with the strength of someone seizing her from behind.

That evening, when she walked the few blocks to Rynek Główny, she was not disappointed by Pronaszko’s recommendation. Strings
of tiny lights hung, jewellike, on the trees that lined its perimeter, creating a soft glow over the elegant cafés. The square
was bisected by a long, ornate building with huge arched arcades along the ground floor, and crowned with an intricate parapet.
According to her tour book it was a Renaissance Cloth Hall, now filled with tourist shopping stalls. On the other side of
the Cloth Hall was a massive statue of someone identified on the plaque as Adamowi Mickiewiczowi. Ellen stopped for coffee
at café Malma, and read that Adam Mickiewicz was a national poet. What an extraordinary people, she thought, to erect a statue
of a poet in their main square. She wished she could have told this to her dad.

The clock tower pealed high above the square. From a church tower diagonally across, a bugle played a sharp, high melody that
stopped in midnote, apparently to commemorate a guard who sounded a warning of a thirteenth-century Tartar invasion and was
silenced by an arrow in his throat. They called the tune the
hejnał
, according to her tour book. She walked back to the hotel, bouncy with happiness at the city and excited about the next day.

Early the following morning, she rolled the sides of her leotard over her tights to her hip bones and knotted her batik silk
dress in a handful of places so it would billow slightly when she walked. Finally, she pulled on a pair of beige high heeled
boots, determined to show Kraków a bit of style.

At 9:00 a.m. she was out the door of the hotel to get an early look at the dance studio and to warm up before meeting the
company. The warm humidity had heightened the smell of pollution in the air. She walked through the smoggy haze that had settled
over Rynek Główny and entered one of the narrow streets on its far side. A few blocks farther, she located the stucco facade
of the address Pronaszko had given her and opened the wrought iron gate. Before her was a short, dank passageway, permeated
by the smell of old vegetables. It opened onto a bright cobblestoned courtyard where the last thing she expected to see was
a video shop. But there it was, complete with the Polish version of
The Terminator
in the window, next to a weird little store with clothes that looked like bridal dresses for children.

Ellen entered the wide, open doorway at the back of the courtyard and began to climb the stone stairs. The risers listed to
the left, and the tread of feet, marching up and down over centuries, had left little hollows in the steps. Thick wads of
dust bunched in the curves of the iron banisters.

On the fourth floor, the lion knocker on the studio door might once have been a fine wood carving. But it had been painted
over so many times it now looked merely globular. An old woman with reddened hands mopped the landing floor. A wisp of gray
hair dangled down the middle of her broad forehead. She seemed to have expected Ellen because, with a few muttered words,
she unlocked the studio door. “
Dziekuje,
” Ellen thanked her.

Alone, she stripped to her leotard and tights. Warped mirrors ran the length of the wall opposite the courtyard windows. They
swelled and shrank her five feet seven inches every three or four steps. She clipped up the copper-colored mass of her hair
and sat on the floor to stretch and calm her nerves.

The morning sun shone through the long windows. Legs wide, she reached sideways, head facing up, and noticed that whole chunks
of molding were missing from the white ceiling. It reminded her of a certain studio where she used to take class in New York,
above a pawnshop on Eighth Avenue in the Forties. It had the same dry smell of accumulated dirt, the same sooty windows and
water bugs.

She stood up and brushed the wooden floor slats with the soles of her bare feet, trying out some movement sequences. After
the long flight, it felt good to move again, to watch, with a certain detached pride, how well her body responded to the demands
of the art.

She began a series of jumps and rolls, but dizziness overtook her. For a moment, everything looked a little green. Her ears
became plugged, as if she was underwater, and she was forced to sit down, cross-legged, and rest her head in her hands. Quavering,
distant sounds, almost melodic, rippled through her ear canal. She’d never had an experience like this before and wondered
if it was jet lag. For several minutes she listened, out of breath, her heart racing in the silent room. Gradually, the dizzy
sensation stopped. She lay down on her back, in the yoga position of repose, and closed her eyes.

At nine forty-five the door opened and a blond girl in a mauve raincoat walked in. She was about a head shorter than Ellen.
In her pink leotard and tights, her hair pulled into a tight bun, she looked like a ballet dancer. Ellen, who had regained
her equilibrium by then and was stretching at the barre, thought she must have startled the girl because, for a second, the
girl just stared. But then she smiled and shuffled to the mirror to unpack her things. In profile, her flat, wide nose was
almost saddle-shaped.

Assuming the girl might not speak much more English than she spoke Polish, Ellen said, “Ellen Linden,” and pointed to herself.
She brushed away several long, corkscrew tendrils that had escaped from her hair clip.

The girl smiled. “Yes, from America,” she said in a child’s voice. “Genia Slabczyńska,” she said, pointing to herself.

Ellen wasn’t sure she could even repeat that last name, much less remember it, but to relieve the awkwardness, she nodded
enthusiastically and returned to her stretches. Again the door opened. This time, a tight cluster of dancers entered, two
slight, fair-skinned young men and a gamine like girl with a short haircut and an elongated neck. The girl was laughing. They
all paused when they saw Ellen. One of the young men waved. The others smiled in her direction.

Pronaszko had assured her that most of his dancers knew some English but that he would have a translator available for her.
At that moment, though, she felt badly handicapped at not being able to make small talk. In her experience, dance companies
were tight, intrigue-packed worlds. The choreographer who ventured into their midst always had to tread carefully.

Several more dancers filed in, each of them announced by the walloping sound of the door closing, until the company, in various
stages of peeling down to their leotards and sweatpants, was assembled. Some stretched against the wall; others chatted in
pairs or in groups. Ellen smiled whenever one of them looked her way. They smiled back, but none of them approached her. She
continued her stretches. It was all very awkward.

At long last, Konstantin Pronaszko sauntered in wearing a cape, a particularly odd form of apparel given the warm temperature.
He was talking to an ash-blond young man with a gelled angle cut and the face of a god. Ellen went to greet Pronaszko.

Pronaszko turned abruptly from the young man. “Ellen! You’ve arrived! God be praised!” he said, rather more for the benefit
of the company than for her, she thought.

The phrase struck Ellen as peculiar, and she laughed, wondering what God had to do with her arrival. Pronaszko looked at her
quizzically. His eyes were deep blue. Inscrutable. He took her hand, to shake it, she thought. But before she could say a
word, he bowed slightly, like some character out of the nineteenth century, and kissed her right above the knuckles. She stared
down at the crown of his head, at the fading blond hair of his princely bowl cut, more alarmed than charmed at his greeting—especially
in front of the entire company.

The ash-blond god put his things down and walked over to them.

“Please,” Pronaszko said to her, with his now-signature bow. “This is Andrzej. He is the translator I promised to make available
to you.” He smiled and, with a hint of gleeful mischievousness, said, “But not too available, yeh?”

“Of course not,” Andrzej interjected, in a manner both amused and detached. He turned to Ellen. “Nice to meet you,” he said.
He had cigarette breath, but a beautiful smile.

“Nice to meet you, too,” she said.

“Of course.” His eyes lingered, in the manner of men used to flirting.

Ellen thought he could be the quickest route to making an ass of herself. Looks were already flying between members of the
company. Andrzej turned to them and made a short remark. Everyone but Ellen laughed, since he smiled at her but did not translate.

No way, she thought, and shrugged at him good-naturedly.

Pronaszko, meanwhile, apparently found this exchange quite amusing. He called the class to order, then formally introduced
Ellen to the company, with much flourish over her choreographic accomplishments. Andrzej translated.

Ellen thanked Pronaszko, said she was looking forward to working with him and with the company, and apologized for her inadequate
Polish. “You’ll be amazed at how much English they know, when it suits them.” Pronaszko winked at her. “Isn’t that so, Henryk?”

The short muscular fellow grinned. “Oh, yes,” he enunciated slowly.

Ellen felt better. She decided it would be more politic to participate than to watch class, and Pronaszko approved of her
joining them.

His class was a smattering of Martha Graham and Cunningham techniques, ballet, and a dash of Twyla Tharp-type frenetic kinetics.
He was showing her what they could do. All through class, he pounded out syncopated rhythms with a heavy, carved wooden cane
and recited odd but affecting poetic phrases in his big, dramatic voice.

They were good dancers, some of them very good. But she could see that every one of them had begun with ballet. They had that
look that afflicts all ballet dancers, a sort of articulate puppetry. Ellen wondered if they would be willing to give up their
technique and go with what she would want from them, or if they would resist her ideas of postmodern choreography.

Near the end of class, when the studio smelled richly of sweat and towels hung limply around dancers’ necks, Pronaszko announced,
“Today, in honor of our American friend, we will do some improvisational work.”

The group rustled, exchanged looks. They seemed a bit agitated, but Ellen didn’t know why, since improvisation was pretty
standard fare for modern dancers.

Pronaszko surveyed the class, clearly enjoying the drama he was creating. “You will each improvise the movement in a work
of art,” he said.