ritual
There is a hunger gnawing inside Antoinette.
Gratefully, it comes from somewhere deep, deep down. She is weak, and can hardly stop herself from bursting into tears twice an hour out of sheer nerves, but she will not break her fast. Her little maid trots in and out of the room every so often to retrieve fresh chunks of ice wrapped in cheesecloth, to dab at the swelling around Antoinette’s eyes — who, more often than not, is posing, looking at her own reflection in her mother’s oak boudoir. It sits beside a tall Eastern window in their home, through which a stream pale light trickles. She is mesmerized by the contrasts, how the shadows catch at her cheekbones, how a strip of brightness bends across her clavicle. She has been crying on and off for so many hours that it looks like she is wearing a rouge. She tries to see herself as her fiancée will see her this evening, and she is very nearly pleased.
This whole fasting project would be easier, Antoinette thinks, if she didn’t enjoy food so much. The greatest pleasures in her life are tastes that drag up memories of brighter, younger times: the chilled mineral splash of wine across her tongue, meat slippery-sliding off a rack of ribs, a mouthful of bursting grapes, fresh-baked brioche still steaming from the oven. Even these days, as she picks over her food like a bird, all she can think about is the intoxication of flavors and textures in her mouth. Her stomach lives in a permanent state of spasm. She tells herself, as she meditates in discomfort, that she is like a dancer, focused on her goal: to be ideal.
Her maid drapes tonight’s evening gown over Antoinette’s bony shoulders and she wavers under its weight. She nearly drowns in the fabric. It is beaded with tiger’s eye, ruby blood clots, shards of amber, the colors of soil. She watches them glisten like liquid in the mirror, holding her breath as the maid buttons it up her back, pleading with God to let it fit, and it does! She almost starts to cry. Finally, her project has begun to pay off.
The maid tightens the dress beneath her bust, letting it hang heavily over the tops of her thighs. Gazing at the fabric as it shifts in the weak light, she notes that these are also the colors of meat, of gristle. She has the sudden urge to tear the gown apart with her teeth. Her hungers move beneath the surface of her like the mantle under the crust of the earth. But she will not break. She wants so badly to look good on Gilbert’s arm. This evening is important to him.
Tonight’s special occasion, for which Antoinette has been dutifully fasting, is the premier of a new ballet at the Théâtre des Champs-Elysées. Gilbert — her fiancée — has somehow gotten them a pair of tickets. The advertising has been all over Paris, plastered damply across the ceilings of the underground metro stations, boasting something new, something daring. Images of the dancers fly past her on the increasingly rare occasions that she uses public transit. Their bodies seem carved out of lean Russian granite, not a scrap of fat to spare. How lucky.
Over the last two months this Théâtre has captured the attention of the entire city. Their program is unique, bold. Everybody in the city with any taste in the arts is scrambling to get tickets, bohemian and gentry alike. It is one of the few places, excluding a couple of jazz clubs and the more infamous cabarets, where both classes come together over art. Naturally, it is a site for debate, but it is also, as always, an unspoken competition of fashion. Which woman is the next great Muse? She who is the most tasteful, most stylish. It shall be a night of elegance.
Antoinette sways, trying to keep the floor beneath her feet. Fainting is not an option. Not now, and certainly not tonight, when she shall be in the presence of the city’s most famous and controversial minds.
Her fiancée, Gilbert, has a love of conversation. Events like these are his absolute pleasure. Antoinette, meanwhile, has discovered that she is an introvert. She attends these parties and occasions for the fashion alone, finding that it’s often difficult to keep up with what Gilbert is saying. Whenever she asks him to explain his meaning he looks at her like she is an idiot, and it feels like a slap to the face. They are going to be married — will he ever be happy with her, or he always find her lacking? Those are her least favorite moments in the world. She would rather stay silent and perfectly dressed, an object of fascination and jealousy.
Gilbert arrives early to wrestle her heavy gown into the carriage, and then they are off, trotting into the heart of Paris. There is a throbbing between Antoinette’s temples, keeping time with the clop of the horses’ hooves. It is a grey, drizzly May evening.
“At the turn of the millennium, the ruling nobles were Christianized,” Gilbert is explaining with his nose held high in the air. “Before, the primitive peoples worshiped Mother Earth, and they believed in an inherent balance of lightness and darkness amongst the spirits of nature.” He peers at her as if to make sure she has been listening, which she has not. She comes back to her body to find it nodding along.
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The Théâtre is alight when they arrive, tiered and creamy-white as a wedding cake. Gilbert helps Antoinette down from the carriage so her knees do not buckle beneath the heft of her dress. She clings to the sleeve of his blazer as they shuffle inside, swept away in the current of the crowd. It seems that this crowd is dressed one of two ways: in pearls, beads, tulle and ostrich feathers, or in simple dark clothes. She heard Gilbert once describe the latter as “the aesthetic crowd.” They scorn fanciness. She tries to ignore the heat of their sneers against her glittering gown.
As they wind their way through the gold-lit lobby to the house and their seats, Gilbert spots several people he knows from his courses at university and society events. He introduces her, they tell her how lovely she looks, and then they forget all about her. Good. Antoinette can hardly focus. Lord, is she hungry. She wonders, with a pang of terror, if the sound of her gurgling stomach is going to drown out the orchestra. How embarrassing that would be! She wishes she could laugh, or cry, whichever.
She and Gilbert finally sit down. They aren’t in a box, which might be embarrassing if they weren’t so near to the stage. The further you’re sitting from the stage, the worse your shoes tend to be, she has noticed. She listens to the conversations happening in the shadowed rows behind her. They are mostly lobbing insults upward, toward the people in the boxes.
The house lights dim, casting them into darkness, and the entire auditorium goes silent. Colorful blotches swim at the edges of Antoinette’s vision. If she weren’t sitting, she might faint.
It begins. The first note is lonely, musical; the curtains stay sealed. At first it is barely audible, but grows louder and more intentional. It is probably a horn of some kind, Antoinette guesses, high-pitched, warbling a strange and eerie tune. She can feel it wriggling into the creases of her brain. The tune feels like something she heard once in a dream… More reed instruments swarm in, sounding like birdsong in the forest, vaguely melodic but busy, clashing. It does not sound like ballet. It sounds like nature, but somehow also sinister, bizarre. Antoinette feels herself drawn to it. But the rest of the auditorium is beginning to churn with displeasure.
Curtains rise to reveal clumps of colorfully dressed human beings kneeling onstage. Antoinette read in the advertisements that the ballet’s narrative is about pagans performing a ritual to help the god of spring crack the icy shell of a prehistoric Russian winter. Their ropy braids dangle into the dust on the floor. They wear red and white linens, flowered belts, ribbons in their hair, bear pelts on their shoulders. Flat sandaled feet instead of ballet shoes.
The music speeds up, grows louder. The percussion is thunderous, the horns squealing. A group of men leap off the floor and begin to pound their flat feet against the stage, jerking their arms to the music like puppets. They whirl around in a circle, stamping and lurching. It is prehistoric, blind, bestial. There is no human emotion in this dance. No discernible order. The auditorium is now roaring their unhappiness, drowning out the cacophonous symphony until it seems like the dancers are moving to the rhythm of the audience’s insults. Half of the audience is berating the dancers and the symphony — “You dare to advertise this stomping as ballet?” — and the other half is screaming to try to silence the first half. Antoinette feels acid rise in her throat. She seriously considers fainting now: this is the suave crowd she has fasted to impress? It is complete, deafening chaos.
The things we girls do, her mind whispers, in exchange for supreme disappointment.
Something sails through the air and smacks against the edge of the stage. It rolls, settling limply near Antoinette’s foot. It is a cabbage. Her stomach growls. A flash of pink — melon explodes down the aisle. Fruits and vegetables begin raining down from somewhere behind her, but she cannot be sure who is throwing them. A clementine smacks Gilbert in the head, sending him reeling. The entire room reeks of produce. Antoinette’s mouth waters.
The auditorium lights begin to flicker on and off, which quiets the audience some. The dancers, to their credit, continue as though nothing is happening, knob-kneed and tippy-toed. Antoinette feels the saliva running in a river down the back of her throat. She steadfastly ignores the scent of food, tucking her hands beneath her thighs to stop them from reaching for the cabbage.
The final section of the ballet revolves around a young woman dancing herself to ritual death. The other pagans march in circles around her. This girl is beautiful, virginal. Her braids whip through the air as she spins. Eventually she collapses, limp and perfect. The men in bear pelts hoist her toward the sky. The stage goes dark. It’s over. The crowd roars. More food falls from the sky.
Dazed and a bit sweaty, Antoinette follows the still-arguing crowd out onto the glossy cobblestone streets. She looks around for Gilbert, but he is nowhere to be found, lost in the stream of haggling theater-goers. Has he abandoned her — is that how unimportant she is to him? Tears come.
She walks down the road under the spluttering gas lamps and a green smear of stars, wiping at her wet eyes. A gang of street urchins gallop past her, their little faces greasy and grinning. They pause beside a garbage can to dig through it. For what?
When they notice Antoinette approaching, they scatter. She looks down into the garbage and sees, shimmering in the lamplight, a perfectly roasted chicken leg. Who would throw away something so wonderful, so mouthwatering? Antoinette fishes it out by the bone and takes a big bite. The juice runs down the front of her gown. She feels the buzz of freedom somewhere inside her jaw beneath her bottom teeth, a strange, oily joy running down her throat.
