panting people of a few moments before had taken on their everyday drabness, the women old and ugly and with lecherous faces and many of the men weak and frightened-looking. In many ways they had enjoyed themselves, pretending to believe the faked cruelties of the villains and the stalwart goodness of their heroes in the ring. Some of them had vicariously asserted themselves before their boss, while some like the little woman two seats away from Grace, had won their battles with their husbands. A few bored men and some of the younger women had watched the matches merely from the interested position of spectators at the exhibition, as the promoter called it.
There were others, like Grace, who had got more out of it than was there. They left the Gardens with the satiated step of Romans leaving the Coliseum or the shamed shuffle of unsatisfied spectators leaving a sexual circus.
Grace began to feel let down, her mind still reeling from the re-enactment of her defloration, her senses made sluggish by the too-vivid memory of that horrible yet strangely fascinating night so long ago. She felt alone in the crowd, separated from it by the incident she didn’t really want to forget.
“Are you sure you’re all right?” her friend asked.
“Sure. My lumbago is bothering me, that’s all,” she answered. “I’ll have to remember to get some of my pills.”
As the two women stepped into the street they felt the unseasonable heat of the day rising from the pavement, making the evening air even warmer than that inside the Gardens, though it was only June.
“Let’s go over to Yonge Street and get a cup of tea,” Martha invited.
“Not tonight, Mart’,” said Grace. “I’m going to catch the subway and go straight home.”
“I’ll be running along then, Gretchen,” said Martha, who lived in the opposite direction.
“I’ll see you, Mart’. I’ll give you a call tomorrow.”
By the time she reached the movie house near the subway station, the crowd from the Gardens had thinned. Standing against a display case full of movie stills was her newest roomer, Clark Cronin. He was smoking a cigarette while keeping his eye on the figure of a thirtyish woman who was pretending to read the posters on a stand in the middle of the doorway. He didn’t see Grace as she passed, and she quickly turned her head away.
When she reached the shadows of a building farther along the street she looked back. The woman was walking slowly in the direction of the Gardens, and Clark was sauntering behind her.
CHAPTER SIX
The first intimation Sophia Karpluk had that the room next to her’s was rented was when she heard somebody whistling from behind the thin wallboard partition that separated her “kitchenette” from the clothes closet next door. She knew immediately it was a man, for the whistling was a man’s: strong, in tune, each note made with an expulsion of breath. It was happy whistling, a woman’s kind, but it was deliberate unlike feminine whistling which is almost always an adjunct to faraway thoughts. She knew by the sound of it that the man was used to living alone, for his whistling voided aloneness. She did not recognize the tune, an American ballad, but she found no self-pity in it. It trilled with a surety that was much more than hope.
Without wanting to she became quieter, almost tiptoeing from the ancient icebox to the double-burner hot plate on its homemade stand. For the past six weeks while the room next door was unoccupied she had revelled in the freedom to make her little household noises without fear of being overheard. Freedom to her was not an expansion of living, but a retention of its privacy, and this included being able to live without her movements being monitored, even mentally, by others.
She cut a half-pound veal cutlet into cubes and placed them in a frying pan on the hot plate, browning them in margarine. The sizzle drowned out the sound from next door, yet revealed to its occupant the secret fact that she was cooking. She stopped tiptoeing and chopped some onions and mushrooms into the pan, letting the increased noise hide her other movements from her unwanted neighbour. While the mixture was sautéeing she retreated from the kitchenette and sat down on the old davenport which opened as a bed. She could no longer hear the whistling, and she quickly dismissed it from her mind.
Tonight she was attending an amateur ballet performance of Petrouchka, presented in a much diminished version by the pupils of the Lotta Iwachniuk School of the Dance. She had looked forward to it all week, as a brief bit of beauty in the long crawling hideousness her life had become. These brief snatches of cultural pleasure were all that kept her sane and hopeful. Several times a year she dipped into her meagre savings and squandered her money recklessly but without regret on the ballet, concerts, and recitals. It also bought her a brief retreat into a past with its promise of what might have been.
It was this search for beauty that had made her notice the music box first of all. On a Thursday afternoon several weeks before, she had wandered down the aisle of the department store and into the gift department. Among the aesthetically beautiful bric-a-brac she had spied the little musical jewel box sitting on a top shelf behind the counter. It was made of wood, lacquered to a high finish, its sides scored with intricate golden designs. Poised on its top was the tiny figure of a ballerina. It was so beautiful, and so in tune with her tastes and memories, that the sight of it made her pause open-mouthed. She had known then that she must buy it, no matter what it cost, no matter what sacrifices she would have to make.
A saleslady came between them, and followed Sophia’s stare to the music box. “It’s cute, isn’t it?” she asked.
“It’s beautiful.”
The woman lifted it down and laid it on the counter. Sophia examined it, smiling at its workmanship, its true artistry, its perfect proportions. She squeezed the hem of the ballerina’s minute costume between her thumb and forefinger. The saleslady picked it up and turned the clockwork key beneath it, and opened its lid. The tiny ballerina began to pirouette on her toes as a series of gentle little chimes played Tchaikovsky’s The Sleeping Beauty.
“It … it’s …” Sophia began.
“Yes, it’s exquisite,” said the saleslady, supplying the word.
“How much is it?” Sophia asked, her eye fixed on the weaving figure, her ears tuned rapturously to the fairy music.
The saleslady didn’t even have to consult the price tag. “It’s a hundred and forty-nine fifty,” she said. “It’s the only one we have. A special purchase which a customer failed to pick up.”
Sophia raised her eyes, repeating the unattainable price beneath her breath. “Thank you,” she said before tearing herself away.
From then on she visited the store nearly every week to gaze at the little ballerina. Its price was ridiculous and she knew she could never afford it, but it had become an obsession and she was always afraid she would find it gone. She had never handled it again, or heard its music, but merely to see it, to glance at it in passing was enough.
At an all-Chopin recital by a world-famous pianist one evening she fell into conversation with a woman in the seat next to hers, and they left the hall together, both surreptitiously wiping the tears of Polish happiness and sorrow from their cheeks. The woman’s name was Lotta Iwachniuk, and she invited Sophia to join her in a cup of coffee.
From then on they became good friends, going to concerts and the ballet together, entertaining each other, sometimes in Sophia’s shabby “apartment” or in Lotta’s comfortable living quarters behind the School of the Dance.
During
