All the Colors of the Dark — Chapter 45

45

He knelt beside her, and she led him in prayer. Grace quoted scripture loudly until the man at the door left them.

“Maybe one day I’ll be the first to see him after the Resurrection. And if I’m chosen, he’ll send me back to the three persons. And they’ll hollow me out. Watch my blood flow over black rock like I never even was.”

“Amen,” he said.

“Ready for the day?” she said.

He did not know if it was the absence of light that heightened her words or just the fact that she had the sweetest voice he had ever heard. She took charge and divided his hours into school and weekend. And on school days she set out a plan and both lay side by side and pretended they could see the chalkboard above them and her delicate cursive crawling across it.

“Monday morning,” she declared, and Patch wondered if it was actually the middle of the night, and also if the girl was a little bit insane.

She cleared her throat and propelled them back two decades. She spoke of the Channel that divides France from England and how on a Thursday afternoon leaflets rained from the sky and told the inhabitants of Paris to flee their city and head for the empty darkness of the countryside. She told of the bombers that crossed cauterized airspace.

“How can you divide up the air? It’s air,” Patch said.

“You can’t just let any old Spitfire jettison right over your head,” she said impatiently.

He did not know what jettison meant but stayed silent all the same. She did not like to be interrupted.

She told him how though Paris was burned once, its treasures remained intact because von Choltitz ignored a direct order. She pirouetted neatly toward Anne Frank and her bundle of contradictions. And when Patch learned of that fear, held in for 761 days, he felt the low knot in his stomach loosen a little.

“That’s the Second World War done. Any questions?” she said.

“So did they—”

“Excellent. Moving swiftly on. From the ruins of Europe came our greatest artform, uniting the commies and the caps. I speak, of course, of ballet.”

Patch sighed heavily and felt her scowl through the darkness.

She detailed the life of Pierina Legnani as she climbed to her feet. “If you could see me now your eye would be wide with amazement. I am pirouetting with the elegance of Marta C. You might even mistake me for a

swan.”

“A swan?”

“A prima swan so purely graceful you would likely gouge out your working eye because you know it will never again witness such beauty.”

“You talk about my eye a lot.”

He felt the lightest breeze as she began to spin.

“The key is to focus on the same point as you twirl. It aids balance. I practiced as a young girl, and I rattled those wooden floorboards with my tap shoes until my heart soared and my legs shook like a shitting dog’s.”

“So purely graceful.”

“With the speed I’m reaching now I could likely generate enough power to light the Christmas tree at Rockefeller Center.”

Patch rolled his eye.

“You’ll go to New York, Patch. And you’ll watch Prince and Odette and Odile, and you’ll feel every move they make. And at the end, when they’re reunited in death, you’ll be the first to stand and clap and whistle.”

“Or the first to fall asleep during.”

“Perpetual motion. They’ll come from far and wide to watch the captive girl who went on to become the prima ballerina. The press will christen me

the Spin Doctress, and I’ll break the record for the most consecutive turns, never losing my balance.”

With that she fell and landed heavily on the mattress in a heap.

“Grace falls,” he said.

She took his hand and squeezed it tightly, leaned close to his ear like she was about to speak when they heard the lock turn.

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