Nervously, I told him no. I didn’t want to bother, and I felt as if I’d done something wrong. That feeling had been hounding me for days now. But then Dante caught my eye and waved me toward him, “Andiamo, come with us.”
“What about my bike?”
“We’ll put it in the trunk.”
“OK,” I said, seeing that arguing would get me nowhere.
30
When we got home, Giulio said we should spend some time out in the garden. He was clearly excited to know someone he could share his passion for ballet with. And I was still on a cloud. I would have done anything he’d said.
We sat on the patio as the sun was about to vanish over the orange-tinted horizon. The breeze shook the tree branches and the crickets began singing in the grass.
Dante brought us something to drink and snack on, then went inside to make dinner. Giulio kept peppering me with questions about my career and where I had studied, and I told him everything: my years at the conservatory, the scholarship I got when I was fourteen to take a summer course at the Ballet de la Opéra in Paris, the one I got to continue my studies in London when I was seventeen. How I became an apprentice at the Royal Ballet and graduated from the English National Ballet School when I was twenty with certificates in classical and contemporary dance. My return to Spain, my rise in the company. How much it had meant when the American Ballet Theatre called me, how I’d never been able to accept that post. Finally, I talked to him about the accident and its far-reaching consequences.
“It’s sad for your career to be cut short like that, but you can stilldance,” he remarked, turning his beer bottle around in his hands. “You didn’t lose that freedom.”
“I put dance before everything else, and without it, I’m no one. I’m nothing.”
I’d promised myself I would stop thinking about that, stop letting it obsess me. What’s the point of worrying over things that simply can’t be? But the words had just come out of me. Was it consolation I wanted? Pity? Or did I just need to share every piece of myself with him?
“First of all, Maya, you still have dance. All you left behind was an elite culture that has as many bad things as it does good. Now you’re just you. And that’s all you need. To be yourself.”
“But, like… I don’t even know how to do anything else.”
Giulio pushed my hair aside and lifted my chin to look at me. “Why are you so obsessed with that?”
I shrugged, almost ashamed. “When I danced, I stopped being invisible, you know. People loved me.” My eyes filled with tears.
“Maya, if they loved you for how good you were on the stage, then they never really loved you at all. And you’re not invisible. I can see you. You’re a beautiful girl with tons of talent and your whole life ahead of you. You lost your dream. I get it—it’s horrible. But dreaming is free, and you’ll find another one. More modest, maybe, but it could well make you even happier.”
“What if I don’t, though?”
“You will, but first you need to learn that you can’t keep looking for acceptance from others, especially not people who measure how much you matter according to how perfect your grand jeté is or how many doubles you can do in a row. Love yourself for who you are, and when you wake up tomorrow, do the same again. That’s how you keep going. OK?”
“OK.”
“You’ll meet lots of people who will love you unconditionally. We already do,” he said. He bent over to dry my tears with his thumbs and I found myself holding on to his shirt. When I finally managed to pull away, I grabbed his beer and took a sip to see if it would relieve the knot in my throat.
The sun had nearly set, and the scent of fresh food was wafting from the apartment house. The two cats that were always roaming around walked over the garden wall and jumped to the ground. I was calmer now, calm enough to say to Giulio, “Tell me something about you. When did you open the school?”
There were so many things I wanted to know about him. He replied, “The school belonged to a woman who helped me to realize I had a bit of talent as a dancer.”
“I think you’ve got more than a bit.”
I wasn’t saying it to kiss up. For the minutes I had danced with him, he’d shone like a star. He had innate talent, and the mere idea that I might have inherited some of it made me feel a special connection.
“Thank you, Maya. My sister was the one who started teaching classes there, two days a week after school. I would go there and pick her up. I would always wait outside, but then one day I went in, and…everything had changed! Nicoletta—that’s the owner’s name—saw something in me. She taught me all she knew and helped me get into the ballet school of the Teatro di San Carlo in Naples, one of the most prestigious ones there is. I graduated, then I went to Spain for a summer, and that same year I got into the ballet at the Paris Opéra.”
“Are you serious?”
“Oui, mademoiselle. I worked there until I was twenty-six and had become the danseur étoile. Then the Bolshoi made me an offer and I was with them for three years. After that, I gave it up.”
“Why?” I asked, astonished. I couldn’t understand. Those wereamong the top five companies in the world. You couldn’t get much higher. He had been a star.
“Do you want the honest answer or the one I give people when they look at me the way you’re looking at me now?”
“The honest one,” I said, feeling slightly embarrassed.
